Christopher Levy, chief executive officer of Jamaica Broilers Group. - file

Jamaica Broilers Group has put $5 million into Jamaica's rice experiment, but now the poultry maker says the investment was simply a good corporate citizen gesture and did not signal an intent on its part to grow the grain commercially.

Broilers has established an exploratory rice farm at Amity Hall in St Catherine, where the company offers technical advice to farmers interested in getting into the business, preferring for now to stick with chicken and animal feed as well as its nascent ethanol business.

"We have no interest in going into rice farming any time soon," said president and chief executive officer, Chris Levy.

"We just finished a major investment in ethanol and we would want to get some returns on our investment. We don't want to over-extend ourselves."

Testing rice varieties

The Government revealed earlier this year that they were in talks with private sector interest to put 6,000 acres of land into rice production, a plan that would require over $300 million in investment.

But they needed to test which rice varieties were best to plant and whether growing the grain could trump its historic lossmaking performance and be commercially viable.

"What we are doing is creating an opportunity for our small farmers," said Levy, referring to the pilot farm his company is running. "It is a great opportunity for them."

The agriculture ministry was willing to put up the land, mostly in regions were rice had been grown before - at Meylersfield and George's Plain in Westmoreland; St John's Road near Dovecot and the Hellshire hills in St Catherine; and the BRUMDEC or Black River Upper Morass property in St Elizabeth.

An attractive proposition

Growing rice for local consumption and for substitution in animal feed production has become an attractive proposition with rice prices climbing constantly on the international market - the grain is selling at US$11 to US$12 per hundredweight.

Jamaica began to focus on farming the grain at the height of fears of worldwide food shortage, and at a time when many rice-producing countries had ceased or placed a limit on exports.

Back then, Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Dr Christopher Tufton said the aim would be to produce enough to satisfy local consumption and as substitution for corn in the production of animal feed, but he now says the state would be seeking to supply 10 per cent of demand and later up to 25 per cent of the 100,000 tonnes of rice that Jamaica imports annually.

Tufton hopes to hit the 25 per cent mark in three years.

"We just need to see how the projects will yield so that a proper structure can be put in place, as rice can be a viable venture," he told the Financial Gleaner.

The 25-acre Amity Hall property is being used to grow Prosequisa four, one of nine varieties of rice being tested in Jamaica, after which Broilers will be providing seeds for interested parties to cultivate the grain.

The Government has some 1,000 acres of land at Amity that it intends to lease in 10-acre plots to small rice farmers. The hoped-for yield per acre is two tonnes of polished rice.

mark.titus @gleanerjm.com