Yam vendor Cecil Burnett weighs some of Trelawny's popular yellow yam for a customer at the 2007 yam festival. - Photo by Janet Silvera

WESTERN BUREAU

Yam will be on show during the Easter weekend when the Trelawny Yam Festival will be staged.

With the theme 'One Parish, one Family, one Festival' the Southern Trelawny Environmental Agency (STEA) event will be held over two days, Easter Saturday, April 11, at the Troy High School in the south and Easter Monday, April 13, at the Hague Agricultural Showground in the north. Starting time for both days will be at 9 a.m.

Up to 18 different varieties of yam are cultivated in Jamaica. Many of these varieties are grown in the parish of Trelawny with the most popular being the yellow yam.

STEA is reporting that 60 per cent of the nation's produce of this tuber is from the host parish and the parish also accounts for approximately 50 per cent of total export. Most of this ends up on the tables of West Indian communities in the United States, Canada and England.

It provides major employment in the southern belt.

Value-added products

There are not many value-added products from this popular tuber even with technological advances. Yam is still only eaten after being peeled and boiled.

However, research is ongoing and at least three products: yam flour, vacuum-sealed yam and the yam punch, can be produced commercially.

Head of STEA, Hugh Dioxin is pledging that yam will be offered in a variety of creative dishes and that it will be in abundance at the festival.