Editorial | The shame of Jamaica’s cattle

Wherever he is now, T.P. Lecky would be rightly vexed, and other Jamaicans ought to be humiliated, by the advice of an American cattleman that the island should import breeding bulls to improve its cattle stock.

The suggestion by Casey Jentz is not just an indication of how badly we have fallen, but of our failure to do anything about it.

Nor can it be claimed that Mr Jentz, a regional manager of the American Angus Association, spoke in ignorance. After all, he was invited to be a guest judge of the cattle competition at the recent Denbigh Agricultural, Industrial and Food Show put on by the Jamaica Agricultural Society.

“The cattle were nice; they fit the environment,” Mr Jentz, who toured cattle breeding facilities in Jamaica, told this newspaper. “I think, from a consistency standpoint, they are not quite there from what I see in the United States.”

Importation and artificial insemination would help. So, too,would securing the cattle breeds developed in Jamaica by Dr Lecky, who became famous in Third-World countries for his work.

In the early 1950s, starting with the Channel Island Jersey and the Indian Sahiwal cow, Dr Lecky, an animal geneticist, bred the Jamaica Hope, a milk cow well adapted to Jamaica and other countries with similar climatic conditions. He went on to develop the Jamaica Red Poll, the Jamaica Black and the Jamaica Brahman, which were good for milk and beef.

HEADY DAYS

Those were the heady days of exciting research at the Hope Stock Farm in St Andrew and the Bodles Agricultural Research Station in St Catherine.

At one stage, Jamaica was near self-sufficient in milk, and it produced a fair amount of its requirement for decent-quality beef. But its dairy and beef herds have collapsed.

Three decades ago, the island produced over 30 million litres of milk annually. It now struggles to consistently produce 12 million litres.

Around a decade ago, Jamaica’s dairy herd was estimated at 30,000 cows, a 60 per cent slump from its high point. But more troubling was the fact that, by the middle of the 2000s, the breeds developed by Dr Lecky survived by a thread.

“I think the Jamaica Black is almost at the point of no return,” Ken Willington, an animal geneticist, said at the time, “The attributes of the other breeds for quality, early maturity, and so on, are still there, but we have less than 500 breeding females in the registered herds.”

Added Dr Wellington, “The Jamaica Hope numbers have gone to the extent that the breed is threatened because there are just about four or five reasonable herds in the country.”

NO EVIDENCE

There is no evidence that there has been a major improvement in the situation. Indeed, judging from Mr Jentz’s remarks – who we assume was exposed to Jamaica’s best-quality cattle – there are problems to be dealt with.

As this newspaper has consistently argued, one of the pathways to Jamaica’s economic development is research and innovation, of which Dr Lecky was an earlier pioneer. But we are not good at sustaining and maintaining things, even important achievements like Dr Lecky’s legacy. So, it is from the high point of the Jamaica Hope, the Jamaica Red, the Jamaica Black and the Jamaica Brahman to being lectured about the quality of the island’s cattle.

This issue raises questions about the work of the island agricultural training and research institutions, such as the College of Agriculture, Science and Education and facilities under the ambit of the agriculture ministry, and whether they are engaged in applied research. If they are, they should show the results.