theres lots of things to consider when moving somewhere new. i moved to hawaii about 6 years ago from california, here are some of my insights.
youll need to understand the history in PR.
-what kinds of large scale agriculture happened there? here we have pineapples, sugarcane, and cattle. each for 150 years in different locations. you can imagine the amounts of chemicals poured into the ground and they used to use weed mats in the pineapple fields. so every site that contained pineapples has layers of plastic ingrained into the soil.
-we used to have closed canopy forests that covered the entirety of all of the islands. large scale ag burned the forests and released the cattle. this changed the ecosystem. places that used to have a forest no longer rain in certain localities. do yourself a favor and find the consistent rainfall and live there. life without rain is very difficult.
-our island ecosystem is very isolated naturally. we have no checks and balances for pests. once something comes in, theres no way it will ever balance back out. an easy example is rats. nothing eats them here so their populations just expand exponentially forever, killing our endemic birds. same with snails, slugs, pigs, deer, beetles, ants, mosquitoes and invasive plants to name a few more. are you willing to deal with this reality?
-what kinds of cultures are there? is a mixed or strictly a puerto rican culture? cultures tend to eat certain foods. its hard to get someone to eat different foods from another culture. you need to stick to these crops if you realistically want to farm for profit. sure you may be able to get a culture to like durian, or you could have the culture hate you and your stinky durian trees. so tread lightly on experimental crops in your region. grow whatever youd like for yourself, but dont plant acres and expect the locals to eat from your trees until its tested.
-small places have tight communities. lay low and be friendly to everyone. people talk. if you do good, people will buy from you, if youre a dick youll be outed by the community.
-culturally how to people feel about foreigners? here people dont like them due to our complicated history. be kind and polite, people will usually look past your differences if you give back to the community. being a farmer is an easy way to have a good relationship with a community. even start out by giving your neighbors some of your overabundance for free, this is also a good way to test new crops by giving out free samples and get the feedback from the people. they will talk and youll prob be accepted and maybe even liked!
-whats the agriculture ties to the US? will you be able to export anything? can you bring anything in? were pretty much stuck here in hawaii becasue of Californias agricultural restrictions. everything we export to the US stops in CA first. they reject everything from us because they do not want our pests. we cannot import a lot of things, myrtaceae species got banned last year here. we can only bring seeds for plants.
-can you grow bananas or are there pests and diseases? here we have banana bunchy top virus. detrimental to the species and its everywhere. most people cannot grow bananas because of the proximity to an infected bunch (spread by aphids). a terrible dilemma.
-what is the value for hired labor? is there a minimum wage? i have 12 acres and simply cannot afford to hire any help because of expense, nor pay myself.
-what is the market access? how long will you have to travel to sell your produce? do you even have a place at the market or are all the vendors occupying most easy niches? here people buy greens. but the market is full of vendors selling greens. so even if i took the time to develop a crop of greens why would any customers buy from me if they can get from their regular vendor.
-do people even care about buying fresh local food? or are they more concerned about just feeding people. here we have two different kinds of people. the 'i buy from the grocery store' and the 'i buy from the farmers'. this is usually directly tied to income and access. poorer communities are less likely to be able to tap into the expensive produce that would be local.
-are there any cooperative organizations to help with processing or access to market. we have a small sweet potato farmer co-op here where the farmers share technology (tractors) and have a labor pool they tap into when they need to harvest their crops. there are talks for a cacao co-op here. you grow the pods and bring them into the co-op for processing, they buy your pods and take on the rest of the process. we have a breadfruit co-op that you can drop off produce and they will buy all you supply. as they process and turn it into dried/dehydrated/milled products that have shelf life and then they market and sell. they even have a relationship with a lot of the local schools and are getting breadfruit in the kids lunch meals. awesome. without co-ops farming on your own can be very hard.
-living in an agricultural region has its positives and negatives. most people will be on the same page, soils will be workable and crops will already be tested in the area, but the pests will already be around and soils will be extremely degraded.
lastly dont grow an orchard. grow a forest! check out syntropic agroforestry.
a little food for thought. best of luck!
aloha