Farm­ers across the is­land of Ja­maica are be­ing urged to tap in­to the grow­ing glob­al de­mand for spice crops, by em­brac­ing the cul­ti­va­tion of gin­ger.

Ac­cord­ing to Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Floyd Green, the coun­try is at a stage where spices, no­tably gin­ger, is in such high de­mand over­seas that it would be tan­ta­mount to “agri­cul­tur­al mal­prac­tice” not to get it right.

“Ja­maica pos­sess­es the ide­al cli­mate and fer­tile soil to cul­ti­vate gin­ger of ex­cep­tion­al qual­i­ty. By cap­i­tal­is­ing on this ad­van­tage, our farm­ers can tap in­to the ever-ex­pand­ing glob­al mar­ket, se­cur­ing a sus­tain­able source of in­come and con­tribut­ing to the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment,” Green said.

“We will con­tin­ue to sup­port and en­cour­age farm­ers in the tran­si­tion to gin­ger cul­ti­va­tion by ini­ti­at­ing var­i­ous gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tives and in­cen­tives. These in­clude, but not lim­it­ed to, tech­ni­cal sup­port through the Rur­al Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (RA­DA) and oth­er sup­port from the Min­istry’s ex­ten­sion ser­vices,” he added.

Green fur­ther out­lined the var­i­ous ad­van­tages of gin­ger farm­ing, high­light­ing the crop’s re­silience, adapt­abil­i­ty and po­ten­tial for high yields.

He al­so em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of Ja­maican gin­ger in in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the food and bev­er­age in­dus­try, where the crop is used as a flavour­ing agent, aro­mat­ic spice, and key in­gre­di­ent in var­i­ous prod­ucts.

The Min­is­ter, in an in­ter­view with the Ja­maica In­for­ma­tion Ser­vice, high­light­ed the lu­cra­tive op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able for gin­ger farm­ers, cit­ing the ris­ing de­mand for or­gan­ic and sus­tain­ably pro­duced crops.