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Despite steady growth in exports of yam over several years, stakeholders in the agricultural sector say the once humble tuber can earn even more than the US$40 million it did from exports from Jamaica in 2023.
However, a shortage of workers for this labour-intensive crop, along with the threat of disease and extreme weather events are among the factors that could limit the growth of yam for which there is high demand on the international market.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, at a value of US$33.4 million, Jamaica was the top exporter of yams globally in 2020, followed by Ghana at US$32.4 million and the United States at US$27 million. The varieties exported from Jamaica in large quantities are yellow, Negro and sweet yam.
The crop also has massive domestic income-earning potential, with a typical return on investment of 63 percent, according to the Agro-Investment Corporation, an agency in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining.
Jamaica earned US$40.8 million, or roughly $6.7 billion in local currency, from the export of yam in 2023, as reported in the Economic and Social Survey Jamaica. The earnings were a 16.5 per cent increase over 2022.
Government’s investment marketing agency, Jampro, reported that domestic yam production – inclusive of the Lucea, Negro, renta, St Vincent, sweet, tau and yellow varieties – increased from 148,674 tonnes in 2018 to 165,046 tonnes in 2019, and reached 195,000 tonnes in 2023. Only 21 per cent of the yellow yam produced by Jamaica is exported, the ESSJ data shows.
Jampro says there are 28,000 yam farmers across Jamaica.
Dr Derrick Deslandes, president of CASE, or the College of Agriculture, Science and Education, told the Financial Gleaner that yam is Jamaica’s single largest non-traditional agricultural export, and supplies about 25 per cent of the yellow yam market in the United States. The white yam market is dominated by Costa Rica, Nigeria and Ghana.
“While other countries have tried to replicate (the cultivation of) yellow yam, they have not yet become successful at it,” Deslandes said.
After experimenting years ago with plastic stakes, Jamaican farmers resorted to the traditional method of using stakes of bamboo or other small trees for the yam vines to wrap for support, he added. Some farmers have attempted to grow yams on trellises, which is a frame of wood or metal that is used to support climbing plants or vines.
Most yams in Jamaica take about seven to 10 months from planting to reaping. Being an underground crop, yam production was not as badly affected by Hurricane Beryl as other produce.
Despite the tuber’s popularity on the local and international markets, Deslandes said young graduates of CASE are not necessarily focusing on investing in yams.
“They are looking for opportunities to work with an entity or to start their own ventures, depending on where they are from or whatever they see happening in the market,” Dr Deslandes said.
Yam is grown all over Jamaica, with the highest levels of production in the parishes of Trelawny, Manchester, St Ann and Clarendon.
Courtney Taylor, a yam farmer from Trelawny, which is a major producer of the produce, says the crop is viable at this time despite the challenges.
“When a crop earns more than US$40 million in one year, that speaks for itself. The yam industry is doing well, but there is room for improvement. Sometimes the market is a little sluggish, but farmers are earning and yam is contributing significantly to the economy of Jamaica,” Taylor told the Financial Gleaner.
He said, however, that hiring labourers for the farm remains a challenge, with the daily rate for labourers at $5,000 per day, plus lunch.
The National Minimum Wage currently stands at $15,000 per 40-hour workweek, and is set to move to $16,000 on June 1, as announced by Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness in Parliament.
“Five or 10 years ago you could access more persons to work on your farm. But in recent times, it is difficult to get people to work. Farmers have to be basically recruiting farmhands from different parishes like Clarendon and Manchester to get people to work,” said Taylor.
“Yam, especially in south Trelawny, requires mainly manual labour because of the undulating topography. The process can’t be mechanised; you have to get farmhands to dig yam hills, to cut and transport yam stakes, and to reap the crop. It takes a lot of labour, and the labour force right now is dwindling.”
Some farmers partner with each other to share labour, while some have scaled down their operations if they cannot manage the work themselves, Taylor added.
Among the efforts to improve the production of yam in Jamaica for the local and overseas markets is the Sustainable Agriculture in the Caribbean project, being implemented by the World University Service of Canada.
Last month, a training session at Shooters Hill, Manchester, dealt with issues such as potential partnerships for scaling the production and the rapid multiplication of seed yams, and featured minisett technology, a process by which yam plants are sprouted from small cuts of yam, rather than from a large yam head, as is the norm.
“We want to explore establishing connections between farmers and buyers, seeing how feasible it is to create mutually beneficial arrangements among nursery operators, greenhouse providers, input providers and other persons who would be interested in ensuring that there is a consistent supply of disease-free planting material for the soft yam industry,” said Country Coordinator for Sustainable Agriculture in the Caribbean, Nelsa English Johnson.
“Jamaican yam is a premium product across the globe and there is always a deficiency between supply and demand, so there’s always a challenge to get consistent supply of yam to meet the export market; and so we find that there is room there for increased production and for farmers to make money,” said English Johnson.
She added that while yam is important as an export crop, it is even more important for the nation’s food security.
“One of the things that we shouldn’t lose sight of outside of exports, is that yam is one of those foods that feeds Jamaicans. So as much as we’re thinking about export potential and bringing more foreign exchange, we also have to be focused on our own food security,” the country coordinator said.
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