Small farmers' production constraints and implications for agricultural diversification in the Caribbean

A long-term study was conducted between 1981 and 2001 in St Vincent, West Indies, and other short-term studies were conducted in the 1990s in the islands of Antigua, Barbados, and Trinidad, West Indies, to determine the major constraints to agricultural production and the influence of these constraints on the sustainability of agricultural diversification programmes in these islands. The results indicated that many of the constraints were common and included marketing, labour, pests and diseases, and praedial larceny. Agricultural information gathering was not a major problem and the main sources of information were the agricultural officers, the media, and other farmers. Agricultural diversification was not successful because it varied with the financial viability of the crops and how well the programmes were advertised and disseminated among the farmers.