GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Farm and Func­tion Ltd is quick­ly emerg­ing as one of T&T’s most com­pelling agribusi­ness suc­cess sto­ries, fol­low­ing a dra­mat­ic res­cue and turn­around that has trans­formed the com­pa­ny from in­sol­ven­cy to rapid ex­pan­sion in less than a year—while plac­ing it at the cen­tre of a broad­er na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion on food se­cu­ri­ty, im­port sub­sti­tu­tion and agri­cul­tur­al re­vival.

Lead­ing that trans­for­ma­tion is man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and CEO, Dr Mikaeel Mo­hammed, who stepped in at a crit­i­cal mo­ment in late 2025 to take con­trol of the strug­gling busi­ness.

“I got in­volved in it on the Plant­i­ng Seeds Caribbean in 2018 as a silent share­hold­er. The two co-founders asked me to be an in­vestor. I was a 25 per cent share­hold­er, but a silent in­vestor and then at the end of 2025, the busi­ness­es weren’t do­ing very well and they were in some fi­nan­cial trou­ble and the two co-founders reached out to me to ba­si­cal­ly take it over and get them out of the fi­nan­cial chal­lenges,” he shared with the Busi­ness Guardian.

Mo­hammed for­mal­ly as­sumed lead­er­ship on No­vem­ber 10, 2025, tak­ing over the com­pa­ny and sta­bil­is­ing its op­er­a­tions.

The co-founders, David Thomas and Rachel Re­nie, re­main with­in the busi­ness.

What has fol­lowed since then is a sharp growth tra­jec­to­ry as the com­pa­ny’s prod­uct port­fo­lio ex­plod­ed from six base­line stock-keep­ing units (SKUs) to an ar­ray of over 300 di­verse of­fer­ings, or­gan­ised across three dis­tinct com­mer­cial lines.

Three-pronged growth strat­e­gy

At the heart of Farm and Func­tion’s rapid ex­pan­sion is a three-pil­lar busi­ness mod­el de­signed to cap­ture val­ue across dif­fer­ent seg­ments of the food sup­ply chain.

The first pil­lar is its fresh pro­duce di­vi­sion, brand­ed “Fresh Har­vest by Farm and Func­tion,” which sup­plies a wide range of fruits and veg­eta­bles sourced from farm­ers across the coun­try.

The com­pa­ny dif­fer­en­ti­ates it­self through pack­ag­ing and qual­i­ty con­trol, of­fer­ing pro­duce in sealed, hy­gien­ic for­mats aimed at im­prov­ing food safe­ty and shelf life.

“If you walk in­to a gro­cery, most of what you see is the fresh pro­duce that we do,” Mo­hammed ex­plained, adding,“The dif­fer­ence is that we pro­vide it in a stan­dard­ised, com­pli­ant way, and we work close­ly with farm­ers to main­tain con­sis­tent qual­i­ty.”

Those re­la­tion­ships are cen­tral to the busi­ness mod­el, with the com­pa­ny pri­ori­tis­ing farm­ers who fol­low Good Agri­cul­tur­al Prac­tices (GAP), while al­so sup­port­ing oth­ers in im­prov­ing their stan­dards through guid­ance and plan­ning.

The sec­ond pil­lar is the com­pa­ny’s frozen di­vi­sion, which has proven to be a key dri­ver of scale as this is cur­rent­ly sold to Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion in T&T and is avail­able in over 200stores, in­clud­ing all ma­jor gro­ceries. The prod­ucts are ex­port­ed as well to Bar­ba­dos, St Lu­cia and ex­pand­ing through­out Cari­com.

The line in­cludes fruits, veg­eta­bles and root crops, all processed with­out ad­di­tives and vac­u­um sealed to pre­serve qual­i­ty.

Prod­ucts are pack­aged in re­seal­able pouch­es with ex­tend­ed shelf life, of­fer­ing both con­ve­nience and cost sta­bil­i­ty for con­sumers.

“Every­thing is 100 per cent lo­cal—no preser­v­a­tives, no ar­ti­fi­cial colours, no added sug­ar,” Mo­hammed said adding, “We’re tak­ing lo­cal pro­duce and mak­ing it more ac­ces­si­ble and us­able for con­sumers.”

The third arm of the busi­ness, “Re­freshed by Farm and Func­tion,” moves fur­ther up the val­ue chain with chef-in­spired ar­ti­sanal line, ready-to-eat items which fea­tures ha­lal-cer­ti­fied prod­ucts root­ed in Caribbean flavours, in­clud­ing bao buns with fill­ings such as cur­ry goat, stewed ox­tail and smoked tu­na, along­side gourmet pies, pat­ties, samosas and pre­sea­soned meats.

“What we are po­si­tion­ing our­selves to do as a com­pa­ny is that we are work­ing with thou­sands of lo­cal farm­ers across Trinidad and To­ba­go to be able to give the na­tion very high qual­i­ty prod­ucts, both fresh, ready-to-eat, con­ve­nient food and frozen for long shelf life, so that there is menu avail­abil­i­ty and no price fluc­tu­a­tion across sea­sons,” Mo­hammed added.

Dis­tri­b­u­tion break­through and ex­port ex­pan­sion

A ma­jor boost to the com­pa­ny’s growth came with the for­mal launch of its part­ner­ship with Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion on June 1, 2026, ex­pand­ing its reach across T&T.

“They are now go­ing to dis­trib­ute our frozen pro­duce as well as our by Bao buns through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go to start with. Then we will ex­pand the num­ber of of­fer­ings that we have with them,” Mo­hammed said, as he fur­ther ex­plained, “It al­lows us to get our prod­ucts in­to su­per­mar­kets across the coun­try at scale.”

At the same time, the com­pa­ny is ac­cel­er­at­ing its re­gion­al ex­pan­sion strat­e­gy.

Con­firmed ex­port or­ders for Bar­ba­dos and St Lu­cia are set to be shipped be­fore the end of June, with stock al­ready pre­pared and await­ing fi­nal com­pli­ance ap­provals.

Be­yond those ini­tial mar­kets, Farm and Func­tion is ac­tive­ly work­ing to en­ter ad­di­tion­al Cari­com ter­ri­to­ries, in­clud­ing St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Guyana, Suri­name and Ja­maica.

“And al­so through the Massy Group, the wider re­gion­al Massy Group, they want the prod­ucts through­out their group.We are work­ing with them on dif­fer­ent ter­ri­to­ries. We have a lot of ex­port op­por­tu­ni­ties that they are very ex­cit­ed about,” Mo­hammed said as he not­ed, “Ex­ports are a key part of our mod­el be­cause they cre­ate con­sis­tent de­mand and al­low us to scale pro­duc­tion lo­cal­ly.”

That ap­proach, he added, is not on­ly about growth but about strength­en­ing T&T’s eco­nom­ic po­si­tion.

Tack­ling sea­son­al­i­ty and im­ports

Farm and Func­tion’s pro­cess­ing mod­el is al­so de­signed to ad­dress long-stand­ing struc­tur­al chal­lenges with­in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly sea­son­al­i­ty and price volatil­i­ty.

By freez­ing and pre­serv­ing pro­duce, the com­pa­ny is able to of­fer items year-round at sta­ble prices.

“Some­thing like drag­on fruit can now be avail­able all year at the same price,” Mo­hammed said. “Con­sumers don’t have to wor­ry about short­ages or spikes.”

The com­pa­ny is al­so po­si­tion­ing its prod­ucts as di­rect sub­sti­tutes for im­ports. Its “is­land mix,” for ex­am­ple, us­es drag­on fruit, pa­paya and pineap­ple to repli­cate the colour and tex­ture of im­port­ed berries, while re­main­ing en­tire­ly lo­cal­ly sourced.

“We don’t im­port any­thing,” he stressed, adding “Every­thing we pro­duce is 100 per cent lo­cal. The goal is to give con­sumers the same ex­pe­ri­ence, but us­ing what we grow right here.”

Oth­er in­no­va­tions in­clude prod­ucts like gin­ger in cube form, de­signed to im­prove con­ve­nience and re­duce waste.

Build­ing a Farmer-Dri­ven Ecosys­tem

Cen­tral to the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions is its re­la­tion­ship with farm­ers, with hun­dreds al­ready in­te­grat­ed in­to its sup­ply chain.

Un­like many in the sec­tor who cite in­con­sis­tent sup­ply as a chal­lenge, Mo­hammed said Farm and Func­tion has ad­dressed this through scale, plan­ning and di­rect en­gage­ment. “We work with farm­ers across dif­fer­ent re­gions, and we guide them on what to plant and when,” he said.

By of­fer­ing ad­vance no­tice of de­mand and con­sis­tent pur­chas­ing arrange­ments, the com­pa­ny is help­ing farm­ers ex­pand pro­duc­tion and utilise more of their land.

“There are 33,000 farm­ers in Trinidad and 2,000 farm­ers in To­ba­go and what we would like to do is have those farm­ers who cur­rent­ly on­ly utilise one third of their acreage start to be able to utilise the oth­er two-thirds of their acreage that are cur­rent­ly unutilised be­cause they don’t have con­sis­tent de­mand. We will work with farm­ers, give them con­tracts year-round so that they can sup­ply and be­cause we will be ex­port­ing the vast ma­jor­i­ty of these prod­ucts, they will have sus­tain­able liveli­hoods. It’s an en­tire ecosys­tem that we are build­ing,” Mo­hammed added.

The com­pa­ny al­so sup­ports farm­ers through train­ing and de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives to im­prove their brand­ing, prod­uct de­vel­op­ment and over­all mar­ket readi­ness.

“It’s not just about buy­ing pro­duce,” he stressed, “It’s about build­ing ca­pac­i­ty across the sec­tor.”

Lead­er­ship and vi­sion

Mo­hammed trad­ed a stetho­scope for agribusi­ness to scale his im­pact. A grad­u­ate of the Roy­al Col­lege of Sur­geons in Ire­land, he left med­i­cine in 2010.

“As a doc­tor I felt that I was lim­it­ed in that I could on­ly help one pa­tient at a time. I felt that by go­ing in­to busi­ness, I would be able to help and cre­ate em­ploy­ment for thou­sands of peo­ple and there­fore help thou­sands of fam­i­lies at a time. And for me, I saw my­self as do­ing a greater good by get­ting in­to busi­ness in this way,” he added.

Mo­hammed’s broad­er ex­pe­ri­ence in­cludes lead­er­ship roles as a di­rec­tor and vice-pres­i­dent of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA), a com­mis­sion­er on the T&T Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion, and a di­rec­tor of ex­porTT pri­or to its tran­si­tion to Glob­alTT.

Call to ac­tion for con­sumers

As Farm and Func­tion con­tin­ues to grow, Mo­hammed is urg­ing con­sumers to play a more ac­tive role in sup­port­ing lo­cal pro­duc­tion.

“We want Trin­bag­o­ni­ans to be part of the so­lu­tion, not the prob­lem,” he said. “When you go in­to the su­per­mar­ket, look for the blue pack and choose lo­cal.”

He ar­gued that every­day pur­chas­ing de­ci­sions could have a di­rect im­pact on farm­ers, busi­ness­es and the wider econ­o­my. “If we sup­port lo­cal, we cre­ate jobs, we strength­en our econ­o­my and we move clos­er to food se­cu­ri­ty,” he said.

For Mo­hammed, the trans­for­ma­tion of Farm and Func­tion is just the be­gin­ning of a broad­er am­bi­tion to re­shape the agri­cul­tur­al land­scape.

“We stepped in at a time when the com­pa­ny was not vi­able, and to­day we are sup­ply­ing the coun­try and ex­pand­ing across the re­gion,” he said.

But the long-term vi­sion, he added, is far big­ger. “We are build­ing an ecosys­tem—one that con­nects farm­ers, busi­ness­es and con­sumers in a sus­tain­able way.”

And as that ecosys­tem grows, he said its suc­cess would de­pend not on­ly on in­vest­ment and in­no­va­tion but on na­tion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion.

“Ul­ti­mate­ly, it comes down to all of us,” he said.