Caribbean Agrifood Business Session n°2

Promoting Bioeconomy and Green Businesses in the Caribbean: opportunities for SMEs

The struggle to combat global environmental degradation and the progress in including socioeconomically marginalised communities in global value chains are both fundamentally dependent on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Innovation across the value chains include among others: packaging design to increase recycled content and reusability, recyclability and compostability, development of renewable feedstocks, and chemical recycling; promoting regenerative agricultural practices;  improving sustainable soil and water management; developing precision agriculture solutions (e.g. nutrient and water looping for vertical or indoor farming); designing food products and supply chains to eliminate waste, bring production closer to consumption, and regenerate nature and soils ; transforming food by-products into new products, biomaterials, and agriculture and aquaculture inputs to return nutrients to the soil; developing approaches to minimize food losses.

In agriculture, traditionally considered a low productivity sector, the application of digital technologies has the potential to increase productivity and yields while reducing inputs of chemical fertilizers, collect, sort and distribute waste, intelligent waste management systems necessarily rely on sensors, big data analytics and cloud computing.

Areas of support to MSMEs are strengthening sanitary and phytosanitary measures, increased traceability, reducing technical barriers to trade, and developing or enforcing intellectual property schemes.

Operators need to be aware of the opportunities and benefits of the bioeconomy and be incentivized to develop new products and production processes and new businesses and value chains to meet a growing demand for more environmentally friendly products and forms of production and create new quality jobs and new markets.

MSMES need to be informed about policies and regulations, link to research and development, innovation and use of ICT and digital technologies to overcome trade and regulatory barriers that may limit the development of the bioeconomy.

Numerous barriers can hamper the implementation of circular and green economy practices by SMEs that can originate, for example, from the SME enabling environment, such as culture and policy-making, from the market chain in which the SME operates, such as behaviour of suppliers, and from lack of technical skills and finance.

The lack of government support and encouragement (through the provision of funding opportunities, training, effective taxation policy, import duty, etc.) is widely recognised as a significant barrier in the uptake of environmental investments.

The lack of knowledge about the benefits of the circular economy has been identified as one of the barriers to the implementation of circular economy practices among SMEs.

The transition of SMEs to green business practices usually incurs administrative burdens stemming from environmental legislation.

Many SMEs do not have the technical capacity to identify, assess and implement more advanced technical options that would enable them to reduce their environmental impacts while realising cost savings. As a consequence, they usually prioritise technologies with which they are already familiar and depend on the suggestions of their suppliers for new technical solutions; however, in order to assess the new options they still need a certain level of technical skill and knowledge

The development of the bioeconomy requires new knowledge and funding resources to develop an innovative product. It also requires a behavioural change and policy measures to raise consumers’ awareness about circular economy practices and products to encourage the adoption of circular business models.