Tilapia on the rise
Published:Tuesday | March 5, 2024 | 12:08 AM
Jamaica took another step closer to enhancing food security and nutrition with last Thursday’s ground-breaking for the Tilapia Hatchery Upgrade project at Twickenham Park, St Catherine, which, when operating at full capacity, will be able to produce up to five million advanced tilapia fry (young fish) per year for distribution to fish farmers.
Ensuring that the facility meets new and emerging climate change challenges was a major factor in its design, the importance of which was emphasised during the launch.
Among the features of the state-of-the-art hatchery will be an integrated power system which will be operated 24-hours with no downtime, even in the event of a power cut. For this reason, in addition to being connected to the national grid, it will have a back-up generator, as well as a solar system with sufficient battery back-up to accommodate the operations, just in case of any emergency. A rainwater harvesting and storage system is also to be built.
The project is being funded by the World Bank through the Rural Economic Development Initiative (REDI 2) which has as its priority focus infrastructure and other developments targeting the tourism and agriculture subsectors, consistent with its goal of helping Jamaica to achieve its economic objectives,” the World Bank’s Operations Officer Dionne O’Connor told The Gleaner.
“We are spending around J$574 million on this project of which $452 million will go to the infrastructure of the hatchery and, of that amount JSIF (Jamaica Social Investment Fund) is putting $374 million and the partner that joins all of us is the World Bank,” Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining Floyd Green explained in his keynote address.
PRESERVING THE DELICATE BALANCE
“This upgrade underscores our commitment to environmental stewardship. By implementing sustainable practices and minimising our environmental footprint, we strive to preserve the delicate balance or our ecosystems for future generations,” JSIF Managing Director Omar Sweeney declared. “This investment will not only boost production capacity but also elevate the quality of tilapia stocks, ensuring healthier and more resilient fish stock being available in the Jamaican marketplace.”
Green spoke to the devastating impact that the small and inconsistent supply has had on small farmers and by extension the country’ efforts to boost tilapia breeding capacity.
“We have been providing about 500,000 fry annually which is about 35 per cent of the demand and what that means, unfortunately, is that oftentimes or small and medium size farmers are forced to wait, up to six months to be able to get stock from the National Fisheries Authority and some go out of business during this waiting period. We have also seen low quality stock largely because of inbreeding and the absence of resources and capacity to have an ongoing breeding improvement programme. This project will give us that capacity,” he assured.
After the introduction of commercial aquaculture to Jamaica in 1976, tilapia was the main food fish produced for local consumption, as well as for export, with production peaking at 8,000 metric tonnes in 2006. However, by 2015 production had fallen precipitously to 646 metric tonnes.
Given the lessons from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and current geopolitical tensions, Green is adamant that Jamaica makes full use of the opportunities presented through this facility.
“The question is, ‘What will we eat if the world should close its borders? What will be our source of protein’? We have to be able to depend on ourselves to feed ourselves and this project is in that vein.”