Country stories / 11 October 2026
Fifteen places, with different histories of land, farming and food. Start with their stories to understand the proposal.
From sugar estates and banana trade to rice-growing coasts and island food gardens: each country has its own starting point. Read what shaped its agriculture, what has changed, and what a local pilot could contribute.
Generalised orientation; markers are not project sites. Map data: Natural Earth.
Programme research covers fourteen sovereign CARICOM members and the Dominican Republic. This is research coverage; available acreage is not established.
15 of 15 country records
Caribbean islands
From a sugar landscape to a broader food future
Sugar reshaped Barbados's land, labour and trade. Alongside that plantation history runs another story: people growing provisions, keeping livestock and building livelihoods from the land.
Caribbean islands
Land, independence and the people who grow Jamaica's food
Jamaica's farming story includes plantation estates and the free villages built around emancipation. Access to land gave families room to grow food, earn a living and shape their own futures.
Caribbean islands
Cocoa knowledge, changing industries and a new farming chapter
Trinidad's cocoa and sugar industries connected rural livelihoods to world markets. Their changing fortunes left agricultural knowledge, working farms and land rights that belong at the centre of any new proposal.
Mainland Caribbean
A food-producing coast, a future to share
Guyana’s coastal rice and sugar fields grew through generations of labour and enterprise. Beyond them, forests and savannas sustain different communities and food traditions.
Mainland Caribbean
A farming future rooted in a living landscape
Belize’s farming story joins Maya milpa traditions, a colonial timber economy and today’s varied working farms. Food, forests and community livelihoods remain closely connected.
Mainland Caribbean
Food traditions from the coast to the forest
Coastal rice fields, pineapples in the savanna belt and Maroon farming in the interior tell several Surinamese stories. Each carries its own knowledge and relationship to land.
Caribbean islands
Build on a country that already grows
From early sugar mills to tobacco around Santiago and mixed banana, cacao and coffee farms, the Dominican Republic’s agricultural history has many centres of skill and production.
Caribbean islands
A future built with Haiti’s farmers
Haiti’s agricultural story is bound to freedom, family land and the work of small farmers. Today those farmers keep producing through a profound food and security crisis.
Caribbean islands
Two islands, two starting points
Antigua’s agricultural history connects sugar and cotton exports with growers who turned to fruit and vegetables. Barbuda brings different soils, water limits and a tradition of gardens and grazing. Each island has its own starting point.
Caribbean islands
A farming future rooted in local knowledge
From banana exports to vegetable growers and Kalinago community initiatives, Dominica’s agricultural story connects changing markets with local knowledge. Its next chapter must care for livelihoods, slopes and watersheds together.
Caribbean islands
The long life of a spice landscape
Nutmeg and cocoa connect Grenada’s farming communities to a long export history. Replanting after storms brings a difficult timescale: restoring productive trees while maintaining food and income for the seasons in between.
Caribbean islands
After sugar, two islands shape their farming futures
Saint Kitts's sugar industry closed in 2005, changing the course of rural work. Across the federation, agriculture continues through growers, new crops and distinct programmes on Saint Kitts and Nevis.
Caribbean islands
Family farms and the changing journey of the banana
Saint Lucia's banana trade connected family farms to European markets and supported rural incomes. As markets changed, growers faced the challenge of sustaining that livelihood while finding new crops and customers.
Caribbean islands
Food crops, rural livelihoods and the next harvest
Bananas, arrowroot and a broad range of food crops have shaped rural livelihoods in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Farmers have adapted to changing export markets while rebuilding after volcanic and hurricane damage.
Caribbean islands
A food journey across islands
Eleuthera’s pineapple tradition is part of a farming landscape spread across islands. From mixed farms to packing houses, the Bahamian food story follows a harvest’s journey from the field to the people who will use it.
From local stories to regional evidence
These dated land-cover classes add geographic context to the country stories. Select a class to see how its mapped share differs across the region.
One region, different landscapes
Compare the same mapped class across fifteen country records. Each bar uses its own country’s mapped-area denominator.
Grassland. This class includes managed pasture and natural grassland. It does not identify vacant, idle, leasable or cultivable land.
| Country | Class hectares | Mapped denominator (ha) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Antigua and Barbuda | 9,637.7 | 45,244.5 | 21.3% |
| The Bahamas | 353,165 | 1,190,353.1 | 29.7% |
| Barbados | 13,475.9 | 43,302 | 31.1% |
| Belize | 365,184.4 | 2,176,405.4 | 16.8% |
| Dominica | 737.6 | 75,089.6 | 1.0% |
| Dominican Republic | 1,374,363.6 | 4,809,852.4 | 28.6% |
| Grenada | 1,432.2 | 35,014.1 | 4.1% |
| Guyana | 1,697,768.5 | 21,172,168.4 | 8.0% |
| Haiti | 1,340,465.5 | 2,702,150.9 | 49.6% |
| Jamaica | 179,333.3 | 1,096,464.4 | 16.4% |
| Saint Kitts and Nevis | 6,874.6 | 26,245.4 | 26.2% |
| Saint Lucia | 3,091.7 | 60,279.8 | 5.1% |
| Saint Vincent and the Grenadines | 2,269.4 | 38,737.3 | 5.9% |
| Suriname | 263,016.1 | 14,510,027.5 | 1.8% |
| Trinidad and Tobago | 78,682 | 514,364 | 15.3% |
Country pages retain the boundary notes. Some offshore islands are omitted, territorial definitions differ, and these screening polygons are not legally certified. Comparing shares does not rank countries’ readiness for a farm.
ESA WorldCover 2021 v200 · Historical observations · Reviewed 11 October 2026.
Shares use classified pixel area inside each selected screening boundary, including mapped water. They do not measure available farmland. Local classification accuracy and parcel availability are not established.