Jamaican farmers have successfully produced iceberg lettuce to distribute locally as well as for export. Jamaica will no longer have to import large quantities of the product to meet the local needs.

Published Saturday March 22, 1969

Locally grown lettuce exported for the first time

Gleaner Farm Desk

The first commercial shipment of locally grown lettuce to leave this country was shipped to Barbados yesterday by the Agricultural Marketing Corporation.

The lettuce, which is of the iceberg type, was shipped in fifty 25lb crates, and the AMC’s sales manager, Mr Ishmael Robertson, was at the Palisadoes Airport to see the cargo loaded on to the BWIA aircraft, which took it to its destination.

Mr Robertson regarded the lettuce cargo as “a significant breakthrough into the foreign market” as up to last year, Jamaica imported much of its lettuce for the hotel and supermarket trade. The country was now in a position, however, to supply all the local needs as well as exports, he explained.  

Mr Robertson said the Corporation had lettuce in stock that amounted to about ten times the quantity he shipped yesterday. And there was much exportable lettuce in the fields, too.

Formerly, Jamaica had to import lettuce as the type grown on the island could not meet all the local needs in that it could not be packed or stored.

With the assistance of the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands and the AMC, however, local farmers started to grow iceberg-type lettuce, which was ideal for packaging and storing, and these farmers are now able to meet all the local demand.

This new type of lettuce is grown mostly in such areas as Johns Hall, Kellits, and Chapelton in Clarendon.

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