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Ja­maica’s Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness says his coun­try needs a com­mer­cial ecosys­tem that pro­motes long-term in­vest­ment in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor to sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost na­tion­al out­puts and ful­ly sus­tain vis­i­tors to the is­land.

Hol­ness told del­e­gates at­tend­ing the Caribbean Poul­try As­so­ci­a­tion (CPA) Eighth In­ter­na­tion­al Tech­ni­cal Sym­po­sium and Ex­hi­bi­tion that ends here on Thurs­day that with more than four mil­lion vis­i­tors com­ing to Ja­maica an­nu­al­ly, col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the agri­cul­ture and tourism sec­tors is es­sen­tial to en­sure that the is­land’s au­then­tic ex­pe­ri­ence ex­tends to its food.

Hol­ness high­light­ed the poul­try in­dus­try’s suc­cess in util­is­ing long-term sup­ply con­tracts as a mod­el for the agri­cul­ture sec­tor to adopt, say­ing “the mod­el that has been de­vel­oped and has worked so well in the poul­try in­dus­try is that you give your farm­ers long-term sup­ply con­tracts so they can make, up-front, the in­vest­ment, and know it will be se­cured in terms of the re­cov­ery of that in­vest­ment over time”