Lo­cal com­pa­ny Farm and Func­tion con­tin­ues to sup­port this coun­try’s agri­cul­ture sec­tor by sourc­ing fresh fruit for pack­ag­ing at its Barataria op­er­a­tion.

Now, as the com­pa­ny is ex­pand­ing in­to the re­gion­al sphere and al­so sets its eye on Eu­rope, it is si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly boost­ing T&T’s agri in­dus­try.

“We re­al­ly be­gan fo­cus­ing on re­gion­al ex­port mar­kets in 2022, through par­tic­i­pa­tion in ex­porTT’s Ex­port In­cu­ba­tor and Ex­port Ac­cel­er­a­tor ini­tia­tives, as well as bring­ing on board a ded­i­cat­ed per­son to man­age our grow­ing ex­port busi­ness.

“Cur­rent­ly, Farm and Func­tion is dis­trib­uted in Bar­ba­dos by Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion, which be­gan in Au­gust 2022, and by H.H.V Whitchurch & Co Ltd in Do­mini­ca, which start­ed in April 2022. “This ac­count­ed for 16 per cent of our over­all sales and we aim to in­crease this to 30 per cent by the end of 2023. We are in ac­tive ne­go­ti­a­tions with dis­trib­u­tors from oth­er is­lands to con­tin­ue our ex­port mo­men­tum,” the com­pa­ny’s founders, David Thomas and Rachel Re­nie, said in an emailed re­sponse to the Busi­ness Guardian.

Es­tab­lished in 2017 by its par­ent com­pa­ny, D’Mar­ket Movers Ltd, the SME founders en­vi­sioned Farm and Func­tion as the prod­uct ex­ten­sion of D’Mar­ket Movers’ phi­los­o­phy of con­sumers hav­ing ac­cess to con­ve­nient, safe­ly grown, healthy foods.

Thomas and Re­nie, sea­soned en­tre­pre­neurs with­in the lo­cal agri­cul­ture sec­tor for over 15 years, are al­so win­ners of Ernst and Young’s 2016 ‘Emerg­ing En­tre­pre­neur of the Year’ Award– through the T&T, Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce.

They said the Farm and Func­tion brand pur­pose is to “nat­u­ral­ly pre­serve the Caribbean way of life to achieve food and nu­tri­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty for farm­ers, pro­duc­ers, and con­sumers.”

Farm and Func­tion’s flag­ship prod­ucts are a re­tail line of fresh frozen fruit chunks and pulps, found in lead­ing su­per­mar­kets, in­clud­ing Caribbean Pa­paya, Caribbean Pineap­ple, Caribbean Pas­sion Fruit, Caribbean Man­go, Caribbean Gua­va and its mixed fruit prod­uct; Fruition Blends.

Since its in­cep­tion to the present the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to make no­table strides.

Apart from the re­tail prod­ucts and the food ser­vice port­fo­lio, Farm and Func­tion sup­plies oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers of lo­cal fruit-based prod­ucts with bulk quan­ti­ties of processed frozen fruits.

The com­pa­ny’s pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty ex­pand­ed its square footage in 2021, mov­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fice to Mid­land Cen­tre, El So­cor­ro. This fa­cil­i­tat­ed in­creased fac­to­ry pro­duc­tion out­put to an es­ti­mat­ed ca­pac­i­ty of 39,000 cas­es per year, and im­proved the pro­cess­ing work­flow, They al­so start­ed the for­mal in­tro­duc­tion of Haz­ard Analy­sis Crit­i­cal Con­trol Point (HAC­CP) food safe­ty com­pli­ance mea­sures which were in­spired by the learn­ings of the Farm and Func­tion man­age­r­i­al team dur­ing Co­hort One of the UTC’s Scale Up Pro­gramme.

Al­so, to sup­port Farm and Func­tion’s growth and in­creased fac­to­ry out­put, the com­pa­ny was able to qual­i­fy for a di­rect sup­port grant from the Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency, to pur­chase ad­di­tion­al fac­to­ry equip­ment, re­tain a HAC­CP con­sul­tant, and sup­port ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paigns both in Trinidad and Bar­ba­dos.

On April 15, 2023, Farm and Func­tion’s Fruition Blends was launched in PriceS­mart in T&T, with the im­mi­nent launch of the prod­ucts at PriceS­mart Bar­ba­dos lat­er this month, as the ship­ment of goods to Bar­ba­dos sails on May 21.

This, the com­pa­ny said rep­re­sents much deep­er pen­e­tra­tion of the re­tail chan­nels of both coun­tries, adding sig­nif­i­cant vol­umes to lo­cal sales and the growth of ex­ports to Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion in Bar­ba­dos. The next area of fo­cus is mak­ing deep­er in­roads in­to the food-ser­vice chan­nels.

In ex­plain­ing how it has and con­tin­ues to cre­ate an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment for farm­ers, the com­pa­ny said Farm and Func­tion re­lies on a net­work of trust­ed, con­tract­ed farm­ers through­out Trinidad who sup­ply high-qual­i­ty, safe­ly grown fruits.

“We con­tin­u­ous­ly aim to build the ca­pac­i­ty of our farm­ers with the as­sis­tance of lo­cal agri­cul­tur­al agen­cies in ar­eas of good agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices to en­sure trace­abil­i­ty, so we can build a food safe­ty cul­ture one farm at a time. We al­so aim to pro­tect our farm­ers by mit­i­gat­ing com­mon risk fac­tors such as flood­ing due to cli­mate change, as well as prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, by cre­at­ing a trust­ed net­work of da­ta shar­ing and bests prac­tices,” the com­pa­ny ex­plained.

Apart from agri­cul­ture, Farm and Func­tion al­so sup­ports the com­mu­ni­ty.

The founders ex­plained it is their un­der­stand­ing that growth comes from re­cruit­ing a team of equal­ly pas­sion­ate and spe­cialised peo­ple, not­ing that 70 per cent of the com­pa­ny’s staff is fe­male, and come from with­in the com­mu­ni­ty near its fac­to­ry.

As it ex­pands, the en­ti­ty is con­fi­dent that lo­cal farm­ers can meet the nec­es­sary de­mand.

“We have built our found­ing prin­ci­ples on the con­cept that our lo­cal farm­ers can rise to the oc­ca­sion. Their gen­er­a­tional ex­pe­ri­ence and com­mit­ment to the craft of grow­ing food have en­abled them to in­crease farm out­put to meet our in­creas­ing de­mands of both quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty.

“With the right farm­ers, we can build a cus­tomised sup­ply mod­el that match­es farm ca­pac­i­ty to our needs,” it added.

Like oth­er en­ti­ties, Farm and Func­tion has al­so had its fair share of chal­lenges.

It not­ed that one of its biggest ob­sta­cles is shift­ing the con­sumer mind­set and palette from tem­per­ate frozen fruit to Caribbean frozen fruit.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the com­pa­ny said there is al­so a mis­con­cep­tion that lo­cal means more ex­pen­sive. How­ev­er, they ex­plained that when com­pared pound-for-pound, its lo­cal frozen fruit is com­pet­i­tive­ly priced and al­so helps con­sumers en­joy at-home con­sump­tion with­out food waste.

Farm and Func­tion al­so faces some ex­port hur­dles.

“Our ex­port chal­lenges stem main­ly from the high cost of re­frig­er­at­ed freight, as well as dif­fi­cul­ty ship­ping less than con­tain­er load quan­ti­ties of frozen prod­uct to grad­u­al­ly build the brand in cer­tain mar­kets,” it ex­plained, while not­ing that col­lab­o­ra­tion has been key as it is work­ing with oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers to con­sol­i­date goods to reach new ex­port mar­kets.

What’s next?

Ac­cord­ing to Thomas and Re­nie, al­though the com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly in dis­cus­sions with po­ten­tial dis­trib­u­tors in oth­er Caribbean is­lands, its long-term goal is to ex­pand its foot­print in­to Eu­rope, where coun­tries such as the UK and Ger­many have the world’s high­est per capi­ta con­sump­tion of trop­i­cal frozen fruit.

“The vi­sion of Farm and Func­tion is to al­ways pro­vide high nu­tri­ent and con­ve­nient prod­ucts to cus­tomers so they can lead health­i­er lives for gen­er­a­tions to come,” it added.