One of the platform offerings from Damion Crawford as he prepared to contest the Portland Eastern seat for the People’s National Party (PNP) against the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) Ann-Marie Vaz in the by-election of 2019, was to provide a doe (also called nanny goat) to individual boys in the constituency to ultimately generate income for themselves and their families.

The “She goat” project, as Crawford touted in the Portland capital of Port Antonio at the time, would be a partial substitute for the back-to-school book grant activity that members of Jamaica’s House of Representatives indulge in between July and September each year.

At the time, the goat-rearing project received mixed response, but as the years passed some Jamaicans have suggested that had it taken off and become successful, the shortage of goat flesh (chevon) that Jamaica continues to face would have been lessened, and those involved would be better off financially.

Even Jamaica’s Minister of Finance and the Public Service Dr Nigel Clarke recently moved to address the shortage by relaxing General Consumption Tax on the importation of goats for breeding purposes.

Crawford, the Opposition candidate for the constituency of St Catherine North Western in the next general election, due in 2025, wants to implement the same project among young people, should he clear the hurdle and record a victory.

“I am still willing to push it,” Crawford revealed to the Jamaica Observer last week. “People have underestimated the concept that I wanted to sell and it wasn’t limited to just goats.

“What I recognise is, those in the Caribbean of a slave experience, for which Jamaica was and even greater than the others, they believe in the incorrect direction between wealth and ownership. Most people believe that those who are rich own something; and the reality is that those who own something are rich.

“The poor persons in Jamaica accept their position of poverty, because being not rich, they should own nothing. However, I am trying to educate the people that if you own something, that is how you can become rich,” he said.

“The vast majority of people who are wealthy own something, and there should be a desire to own, a demand to own, so that you can increase your wealth,” added Crawford, a senator in the Upper House of Parliament.

“What I wanted to do was give a seventh grader that understanding of the outcomes of ownership, and from that he would own three goats that would multiply within five years to between 30 and 40 goats, if you chose not to sell any of your females. But even if you sold all the offspring, it could still show how that [proceeds] could pay for your education.

“The normal receipt from a politician for back-to-school is $2,000 to $5,000. If you got a goat of value $60,000 in seventh grade, you would be able to make $120,000 a year — $140,000 by simply selling its offspring…so it would be a much greater contribution than the $5,000 for a $40,000 book list, especially for those persons who would have been willing to take care of those animals,” he explained.

“So it was a principle that I was trying to sell — a principle that there wouldn’t be goats in Tivoli Gardens, if I decided to run in Tivoli Gardens, because they would not have the circumstances to raise goats efficiently. It would have been somewhere else. What I want for all Jamaicans is for them to own something — have a skill, have a job, own a business and I think that if we train them in their childhood about the benefits of owning… they would want to be landlords instead of tenants.

“So that principle remains, and being in a rural constituency with a lot of rain and a lot of forage, I will be proposing the goat concept again. Would it be a central part of a campaign? I would be foolish to repeat something that never got started, but it would be a central part of my operations as a Member of Parliament. I think that I have proven that by doing it myself,” Crawford said.

“The Government now is promoting goats. Recently Nigel Clarke was kind enough to indicate that the removal of the GCT from ruminants importation was through my personal lobbying and personal efforts. I was grateful for that recognition and I am happy that they went into that direction,” Crawford stated.

Apart from running a large chicken business which supplies eggs to the local market, Crawford also operates a viable goat farm in central St Mary.

Following his defeat to Vaz in 2019, he started with 49 goats, and now has about 500.

“I have learnt a lot, and I have lost a lot too,” said Crawford, “but the work continues.”