Raphael John-Lall
President of the Agricultural Society of Trinidad and Tobago, Daryl Rampersad is warning that if the ease of doing business is not improved in T&T, farmers across the country will continue to face serious financial challenges.
In an interview with the Business Guardian, he lamented that the business environment in T&T is a poor one.
He said “thousands” of farmers across the country are affected.
“There’s no ease of business for the agricultural sector. It’s one of the most difficult sectors. For example, you heard about the difficulties when importing certain inputs into the agricultural sector. Up till last month, I had to intervene with a farmer who is one of the biggest food producers within T&T, and he brought in equipment and cold storage facilities and so on. And he almost had two months delay in being able to clear the equipment off the port in Trinidad,” he said.
Rampersad said he had to make several calls to other persons in authority to get that process completed.
“I will support the statement by saying that the ease of business with the agricultural sector is not there. Whilst you would hear that they are promoting agro-processing and all these things, the ease of business does not exist for the farming community.”
Access to finance remains another issue that he identified.
“Transforming the farmer to the agro-processor or the agri-entrepreneur, as we like to call them, access in finance remains an issue as well too. I can plant a crop and successfully reap it and still be waiting to receive the loan from the Agriculture Development Bank (ADB). So again, it’s not farmer-friendly. The ADB needs to be re-evaluated, looking at the interest rates and so on.”
He gave examples of the cost of equipment and what agri-entrepreneurs use them for.
“We are looking at well over between $250,000 to at least a minimum of $1 million to access to do any form of agricultural incentive, depending on the sector. Setting up a factory, the smallest piece of equipment. I’m talking from my personal experience, the equipment alone will run you probably well over $750,000 for a basic. Let’s use pepper as an example, you’re looking at the machinery to grind and that kind of thing.”
Foreign competition
Agriculture consultant Riyadh Mohammed told the Business Guardian that low farm profitability in T&T is closely linked to intense competition from cheaper imported food products, especially in key value chains like poultry, processed foods, vegetables, and root crops.
“The result is a structurally weak farm sector that contributes under 2.0 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) while consumers depend heavily on imports for their daily diets,” he said.
He noted that agriculture in T&T employs under less than 4.0 percent of the population, reflecting long-term decline in economic weight and attractiveness compared with energy and services.
He said a key symptom of underperformance is stagnating crop and livestock output. According to the information he gave, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) crop production index for T&T has remained close to the baseline or only modestly above it in recent years, signaling limited productivity growth in domestic agriculture.
He added that T&T is one of the most import-dependent food economies in the region.
“The US Department of Commerce reported that in 2022 the country imported about US$450.2 million in agricultural products from the United States alone, making it the second largest market for US agricultural exports in the English-speaking Caribbean, with roughly 40 per cent of its total food imports originating from the US.”
These imports he said span key categories such as poultry and poultry products, wheat, dairy, eggs, fruits and vegetables, livestock feeds, and a wide range of processed foods.
He said in practical terms, supermarket shelves and fast-food chains are dominated by imported frozen chicken, cheeses, cereals, canned vegetables, snack foods, and beverages, setting a low price and high convenience benchmark that local producers must try to match.
According to Mohammed, empirical research on small-scale crop farmers confirms that profitability is structurally low.
“A stochastic profit frontier study of small crop farmers in T&T found an average profit efficiency of only 48.4 percent, meaning that, given the technology and prices they face, farmers are realising less than half of their potential maximum profit. The same work showed that rising wage rates significantly reduce profitability, while more years of farming experience improve it, highlighting how both cost pressures and management skills shape outcomes.”
He said the influx of cheap imports creates a “price-cost squeeze” for local food producers and farm operations.
“On the cost side, local farmers face relatively high wages, expensive imported inputs (fertilisers, pesticides, and animal feed), transportation expenses, and, in some cases, insecure land tenure that discourages long-term investment. On the revenue side, imported products often set a ceiling on the domestic price that retailers are willing to pay for local equivalents, particularly in commodity-type products like poultry, basic vegetables, and processed foods.”
FARMERS’ EXPERIENCE
Stanley Lalla, a 33-year-old livestock farmer based in Longdenville has been in the business for 16 years.
On his farm, he rears water buffaloes, cows, goats, sheep, pigs and rabbits.
He told the Business Guardian that while he is passionate about raising and taking care of animals, it is becoming increasingly difficult to turn a profit in such a challenging industry.
He spoke about some of the problems that he encounters in his field.
One of his biggest headaches is the cost of feed each month.
“On a rough average, I spend close to $6,000 on feed alone. There’s no labour included, just feed alone. $6,000 on feed alone. My animals are pen animals. They do not graze.”
Finding labour is also another challenge that he faces and he said when he hires young people to work for him, their productivity is very low.
“I hire someone to help me cut grass, where that worker will pickup the grass while I cut it. And then he will just load it into the vehicle. So, when I reach back on the farm now, I have to get the grass offload. I cannot afford to pay a worker full-time. It is hard for me to get someone for an hour to just cut grass.”
He also said after he has put in work to rear animals, once it is time to sell them another challenge is cheaper imported animals, whether they are in T&T, legally or illegally.
“When Venezuelan animals come through the back door, local farmers catch their tail to sell their local animals because someone will get a Venezuelan animal for $600, whereas I might sell an animal for $1,200, but it will be local and it will be healthy. People tend to go for the cheaper animals faster.”
He also spoke about how precarious farming is because after investing time and money into raising animals, an animal can end up dying erasing years of work and money.
“I had lost two or three cows…it was a huge, huge loss for me losing two animals in one year. You pay $10,000 for it and you just lose it in a couple of weeks. Then it was very, very hard.”
Other problems include the availability of medicine for animals, vets visiting his animals in a timely manner and finding other animals with the right genetics to breed with the animals he has.
Finally, he said while he has incurred some losses, he is still in the business after 16 years because of his love for farming and because of hard work he still turns over a profit.
“I do not have a lot of losses on my farm, which, I am grateful for. Sometimes I do make a profit but it is not like a 50 per cent profit margin or anything like that.”
