Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism, Hon. Edmund Bartlett, wants farmers to reap more from the 42 percent expenditure by Jamaica’s four million tourists on food. He has asserted that visitors love the Jamaican food that had to be provided to make money from the industry.
Pointing to the enormity of the value chain, he says fruits and vegetables alone constituted J$350 billion of demand in tourism, “and we’ve only been able to supply 20 percent of that.”
Minister Bartlett was addressing a gathering of South Trelawny farmers in the rural agricultural community of Ulster Spring on Saturday, September 2, after formally presenting them with some fifty (50) 650-gallon water tanks. He said that with the farmers producing a wide range of food crops, fruits, and vegetables, Trelawny was one of the bread baskets of Jamaica.
