The study of the agricultural history of Jamaica, particularly after the seventeenth century when England seized the island from Spain, has traditionally been dominated by investigations of the sugar industry. Recently a few scholars have deviated from this path to examine in varying degrees of detail, agrarian activities which did not represent the standard eighteenth-century West Indian route to wealth. Foremost among this growing body of literature are articles and papers on the livestock industry (and livestock farmers), arguably the most lucrative of the non-sugar economic activities in rural Jamaica, perhaps until the advent of coffee later in the eighteenth century. Intended as a contribution to the historiography of non-staple agricultural production in colonial Jamaica, this article traces the early establishment and expansion of the important livestock or ‘pen-keeping’ industry. But the history of pens must also be located within the context of the dominant sugar economy; for during the period of slavery, pens were largely dependent on the sugar estate to provide markets for their outputs. Indeed pens expanded as a result of the growth of the sugar industry and, therefore, the importance of the livestock industry in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Jamaica is best appreciated by examining its economic links with the estates.
Livestock Farmers’ Perception on Animal Husbandry Services Rendered Under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
