Sandals chefs enrich food fair and farmers’ market
MONTEGO BAY, St James — Nearly 1000 visitors to the recent Rural Agricultural Development Authority’s (RADA) Food Fair and Farmers’ Market, in Montego Bay, were treated by Sandals resorts’ chefs to a culinary spread ‘fresh from the garden to the table’.
Chefs from Sandals Montego Bay, Sandals Royal Caribbean and Sandals Carlyle kept patrons enthralled with interactive cooking demonstrations on how to prepare healthy meals, using items from their market bags.
Regional Public Relations Manager Khadine Daley,said Sandals fully recognised the contribution of the agricultural industry to the Jamaican economy and will continue to support local farmers in the drive towards economic growth.
Sadie Dixon-Bennett, deputy parish manager for RADA, described the day’s activity as reaping fruits even as she commended the sponsors’ participation.
“The day was a tremendous success. I am very grateful to our sponsors, ATL Automotive, and all the entities that participated such as Sandals, Lasco, Adwa and Tortuga ,” Dixon-Bennett said.
“It was certainly a pleasure having the Sandals team on board,” she added. She noted that the cooking demonstrations by the Sandals chefs added “an exciting new element to the event.”
Dixon-Bennett said that with the upgraded food fair and farmers’ market concept, RADA’s intent was to bring together agricultural partners and other sectors — such as tourism and food processing — to promote local produce and embrace the ‘eat what we grow, grow what we eat’ campaign.
She described the food fair and farmers’ market as an improvement on the original farmers’ farket concept that was launched in 2011.
“With the farmers’ market concept our intent was to address the over-production in agriculture at the time and encourage Jamaicans to eat more locally grown produce,” Dixon-Bennett explained. “This initiative has been very successful in the past, but we wanted to find new ways to attract people to the event and so we decided to label the event a food fair and farmers’ market and invite other entities such as Sandals, Tortuga Ltd and others on board,” she said.
