BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – THE Agriculture Department continues to push its Breadfruit initiative within St. Kitts and is receiving favorable responses from locals.
This pronouncement was made at the recently held Eat Local food fair in Independence Square by the Department’s Marketing Representative Tom Buchanan.
He was at the time answering questions from the media about the response breadfruit has received from the local populace since the initiative was introduced by the Agriculture Department.
“It has been really good! We had our annual Open Day just recently in April and there we had breadfruit punch and a variety of breadfruit products…that same breadfruit booth was the most popular by far,” Buchanan said.
The Marketing Representative also said that large crowds had flocked tents and purchase all “breadfruit products” that were on sale at the Agriculture Open Day.
“They were all tasted and accepted by the public and that is why we are kind of pushing breadfruit now as well in this event.”
He declared that the breadfruit project concludes in December of this year, but other initiatives would be used to promote its drive locally.
To this end, Buchanan declared that they would be working with the Fisheries Department to push the project at an upcoming event to be held later this year by that Department.
“For sure you would be seeing more initiative like this. What we are going to do in the future from this point on is piggy back on other events carried out by different departments and ministries. The Fisheries Department has an event coming up, I think in November, and we would take advantage of that as well.”
Buchanan told this publication that the Department has already started exporting both breadfruit and its products to overseas markets.
“We are trying to develop the processed products coming out of breadfruits. We did some market studies and we looked at demands in different countries. We also looked at buyers in different countries and there is a demand out there.”
Breadfruit continues to play an integral part in the diet of locals. They create bake products, ice cream, roast products and also include it in soups.
