NAREI pushing for increased carrot cultivation to help meet growing local demand

Sean Winter at his Kildonan carrot demonstration forum

With locally grown potatoes and onions already having made a modest breakthrough on the local market the Ministry of Agriculture’s National Agricultural and Extension Institute (NAREI) believes that carrots could be on the threshold of a similar breakthrough.

NAREI says that limited information culled from domestic consumption patterns points to an increasing demand for carrots at the domestic level and that its market intelligence has led it in the direction of partnering with local farmers in pursuit of the production of carrots on a commercial scale by 2020.

The Institute says that data acquired from the National Plant Protection Organization (NPPO) indicates that local distributors   imported   approximately   532,960    kilograms of carrots from Brazil, the United States of America and Costa Rica in 2016 and that these were distributed to consumers via supermarkets, markets and community shops across the country.