Small producers say high transport costs, unreliable shipping and weak distribution links continue to keep regional products off store shelves.

Caribbean micro and small agricultural enterprises are calling for practical help with shipping, packaging, buyer connections and financing, arguing that training alone has not solved the harder problem of getting their products into regional and international markets.

The concerns emerged during a virtual regional forum hosted by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) under the theme, ‘Moving Products to Markets, Literally!’

Participants said demand exists for Caribbean-made food, wellness and other agricultural products, but small businesses continue to struggle with inconsistent freight services, high transport costs, inadequate cold-chain infrastructure, customs procedures and limited access to distributors.

“This forum starts with the endgame—literally placing products on shelves in home and regional markets, and potentially beyond,” said Diana Francis, IICA representative in Trinidad and Tobago and coordinator of the project.

“We want to go beyond conventional capacity building and telling AgriMSEs where the markets are. We want to help them put their products on the shelves and keep them there,” said Francis.

The CDB-funded initiative is supporting agricultural micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in five Caribbean countries. It is built around three areas: facilitating market access and trial exports; helping businesses expand production to meet demand consistently, and improving their access to financing.

The scale of the challenge was reflected in the experiences of businesses participating in the forum.

Antigua and Barbuda-based Shade Hydroponics, which trades as SHAADE, produces herbal teas, honey products, peppers and wellness items using locally grown ingredients. Although the company considers itself technically prepared to enter regional markets, it identified buyer connections, packaging support, processing equipment and export logistics as the investments still needed to expand.

Dominican company Bee Natural has already placed its honey, beeswax and propolis-based wellness products in several Caribbean markets, but founder Terri Henry-Lovell said unreliable and expensive regional freight remain a major obstacle.

In some cases, exports depend on travellers carrying products in their personal luggage because small businesses cannot secure affordable and dependable air or sea freight.

That arrangement may help companies fill occasional orders, but it cannot support the consistent volumes and delivery schedules required by retailers and distributors.

Representatives of Onboard Freight and Logistics used the forum to discuss customs procedures, small-volume shipping and the consolidation of cargo from several exporters. Regional retailers also identified weak export documentation, limited understanding of CARICOM certification requirements and poor coordination among producers, distributors and logistics providers as barriers to placing more Caribbean goods on shelves.

The complaints reflect a problem the region has acknowledged for more than two decades. A fragmented and unorganised private agricultural sector was identified among the 10 binding constraints under the Jagdeo Initiative in 2005. Twenty-one years later, many small producers still lack the scale, financing and market systems required to compete consistently.

CDB economist Xavier Ajani Malcolm said earlier this year that the prevalence of informal employment also kept businesses fragmented, limiting their ability to increase production rapidly and adopt new technology.

Participants agreed that no single institution could resolve the problem. They called for closer coordination among governments, development agencies, financiers, logistics companies, distributors and business-support organisations.

IICA representative in Barbados Allister Glean said the emphasis must shift towards “practical interventions rather than isolated training activities”, supporting businesses from their earliest stages through to sustained participation in regional and international markets.

The IICA-CDB initiative is expected to assist businesses with packaging, branding, compliance, distributor connections, trial exports and financing.

Its success, however, will ultimately be measured less by the number of workshops delivered than by the number of Caribbean products reaching store shelves—and remaining there.