3. The coffee coyote.
Not every coffee middleman or broker is necessarily a usurious ‘coyote’ who keeps the farmers he buys from in constant debt by taking the harvest as collateral against loans with exorbitantly high-interest loans. The volatility of the commodity market price must also be considered when finding the cause for a farmer’s persistent debt. Fair Traders have emphasized the coyote in their argument for buying direct. The argument could also be made that the North, collectively or acting as nations, has put farmers in debt by having colluded (via the ICA) with large roasting companies and the Brazilian plantation owners to rig a price control system that favors large producers capable of stockpiling coffee and weathering out low prices. Small farmers cannot afford but to sell their entire coffee harvest each year, regardless of the price. To be fair to the Fair Traders, whether the fault is with the local coyote or the international markets, the Fair Trade buyers pay a premium price always above the market price and guaranteed in advance of the harvest. Then again, if it wasn’t for the fact that we have such a speculative commodity market, the price premium would not appear so magnanimous.
Like all North-South debates the argument quickly devolves into accusations that, on the one hand, the corrupt governments of the South serve the minority elite with policies that keep the labour force large, powerless, and wage-dependent. On the other hand, academicians and politicians from the South argue that the cause of their nation’s continuing poverty is deliberate, albeit cantilevered subversion of national sovereignty and self-determination on the part of the North and its dominance of trade relations.
Since its beginning coffee was not only an agricultural but a banking industry. Increasingly, it is not the producers or even the roasters but the money lenders and speculators who have gotten wealthy off coffee. This increasing control of coffee by non-producers did not evolve without conflict. In fact it was the frequent protests by farmers in the 1930s over the control of coffee prices and lending rates of the beneficios that led to government regulation in Costa Rica and Colombia, resulting in national associations to regulate prices and volume traded.
Pessimistically, even the fact that the coffee sector in many parts of Central America and Chiapas has evolved into a system of small collectives of family producers can be viewed not as a sign of social progress, i.e., the survival of family units and indigenous cultures in the face of oppressive regimes, but rather as evidence both of ‘self-oppression’ (sensu Cambranes 85), that is, an ever more efficient division of labour to benefit the capitalists and/or the consequence of determined market interference by the United States in the 1980s, which amounted to cartel-busting and led to the break-down of previously robust national coffee marketing systems of Mexico and Central America. The US break from price controls was on the surface in reaction to consumer protests of the rise in coffee prices (Lucier 88). More cynical observers would describe the price protest as manufactured hype to give the US Congress an excuse to break the longest-surviving economic coalition of developing nations. Only the powerful and organized Colombian Coffee Federation survived intact the 1989 US undercutting of the ICA. (6)
To say that estate owners, traders, and national marketing organizations are all geared to suppress the small farmer and that the only way to social reform is for small farmers to deal directly with foreign buyers poses an interesting question. Is dealing with foreigners the only recourse for small farmers? The Federacion Nacional de Cafeteros (FNC) of Colombia is seen by many European and North American roasters as difficult, corrupt, and an obstacle to the progress of specialty coffee (including certified shade grown and Fair Trade coffee) in Colombia. Many Latin Americans would argue that national marketing systems do more for the peasant farmer than foreigners who buy direct. This opinion was echoed by an American, a former coffee buyer now working for the FNC, who contends that Colombia’s system only appears to be undemocratic to the frustrated American buyer trying to do business with them. The FNC, flawed as it is, may be the best deal for Colombian farmers in the sense that it is possibly the most stable and democratic institution in an otherwise troubled country and can stand up for Colombian farmers’ interests against the pressures of the world trading system.
What is the real identity of the coffee coyote? Each one of the seemingly contrary scenarios of blame described above depends on there being a buyer for the final product. Therefore, the ‘blame’ -or the power- lies in the hands of the consumer.
4. Shade coffee and cup quality.
What the taste of a good cup of coffee should be is something that is dictated not solely by nature and the farmer’s skill but also by historical accident and more subtly by policies that benefit one group in the coffee world over another. For example, the difference in taste, either real or perceived, between sun-dried and wet-processed coffee was what allowed the beneficios (processing mills) to gain control over the coffee growers and eventually act as creditors. (7) Does washed coffee taste better than sun-dried? That’s a matter of taste. What is certain is that the washing method allows for larger crops to be processed much more quickly.
How about shade coffee? Does it taste better than sun coffee? Do older, lower-yield varieties taste better than the new cultivars? Which exporting country has the best quantitative measure of bean quality? Two key facts are often ignored in the taste debate: 1) that roasting is equally -if not more- important to cup quality than is the handling of the raw beans, and 2) ‘quality’ may be as much perceived or stubbornly historical as it is real (the taste preference of a naive consumer). The taste debate, encouraged by specialty coffee roasters, is illustrative of the “wine-ification” of coffee, wherein broader perceptions (national or regional chauvinism), associations (nostalgia of ex-patriots), and traditions (forceful promotion) become part and parcel of ‘cup quality’. For example, older coffee drinkers may still swear that Antigua is the best coffee there is even though coffee buyers and cuppers agree that the quality from that region has much declined in the last decade.
There have been very few studies to test the assumption that shade confers better taste to the coffee. One industry study reported at the Coffee Congress (Griswald 96). Two stands of Bourbon-type coffee of comparable age (10 and 12 yrs) but growing at different altitudes (3,300 ft and 4,200 ft) were put through a chemical analysis and professional taste test. The higher altitude bean was more acidic (giving the desired taste). This is thought to be because altitude retards growth, therefore concentrating desired saccharides in the bean. Shade was also correlated with better taste, apparently for the same reason - delayed maturity of the bean increased the concentration of saccharides. Griswald qualified these results as a preliminary study and encouraged others in the coffee trade to test their assumptions with scientific evidence.
There is no reason why provenance can’t have as much value to the consumer as actual taste - it always has because of the associations, however romantic or misinformed, that consumers make between any product and its place of origin. However, (and coffee roasters, merchandisers, and picky drinkers will take exception) it would be incorrect to ascribe cup quality principally to region. Variations in the quality of unroasted coffee have more to do with seasonal vagaries, differences among farms, and shipping conditions. Variations in quality of roasted coffee must include these factors as well as the roasting process itself.
5. The famed biodiversity of shade coffee.
If the history of coffee calls into question all our preconceptions about what buying specialty coffee means for indigenous culture and independence is there anything left? Of course the human side of the equation will always be the hardest to characterize. Nature is more clear cut. We can say with some certainty that shade coffee is providing valuable habitat for wildlife. There are several well-researched studies that show that some types of shade coffee farms have as much avian diversity as undisturbed forest (Greenberg 95, Perfecto 96, Vannini 94, Wunderle 94 96). While research in this area has carefully surveyed the number of species of birds or certain taxa of insects, the vegetation of these study sites has not been as well catalogued and thus it is difficult to draw conclusions about what vegetational diversity, structure, and level of activity on the coffee farm is necessary to support the numbers and diversity of birds that were observed. There are two key caveats to the notion that shade coffee = birds : 1) there are many kinds of coffee farms with vastly different ecologies, and 2) the vegetational composition is motivated by the farmer’s goal to maximize production under acceptable risk and is therefore likely to change over time and from farm to farm (see Swantz 96). ‘Shade coffee’ as it is discussed in the academic literature and promoted by coffee roasters public could mean anything from highly diverse indigenous forest gardens, with as many as 300 plant species per hectare (Alcorn 81) to technified coffee plantations sparsely shaded by one timber species (Nestlel 95) - and everything in between. The relationship between organic production, shade coffee, and birds and the latest certifications will be reviewed in more detail in Section 3.
To fairly assess the claim that shade-coffee farms are as diverse as forest it is necessary to look at a landscape of coffee farms rather than individual plots. In discussing her findings of ant diversity on tree farms, Ivette Perfecto (Coffee Congress 1996) points out that an individual coffee garden may not have a greater number of ant species than an equal area of sun coffee but, it was found that the composition of Formicidae of each farm was different and concentrated, even to the point of being completely different from one tree to the next. As a result, the overall shade-farm landscape had a much larger species index than an equal area of monoculture. Although it would be speculative to say that a predictive rule can be made from these observations, it may indeed be possible that the diversity index for some insect taxa in agroforestry systems increases exponentially (or nearly exponentially, excluding the repeated species) with the addition of every tree.
In all likelihood, the biodiversity of indigenous gardens containing coffee has been underestimated. Separate inventories have focussed either on birds, certain invertebrate taxa - spiders (Robinson 74), ants (Benitez 90, Perfecto 94, Nestel 90) , and beetles (Moron 85, Nestel 93, ), or plants (Alcorn 81, 84). There is yet to be an overall inventory of the biodiversity of any one coffee garden, or, indeed, an inventory of a comparable area of undisturbed forest in the same area. In the absence of a top to bottom survey, it may be possible to estimate from the number and species of trees in a plot, the numbers of other species one can reasonably expect. Perfecto’s observations about the extreme local endemism of ant species (down to single trees) is one example. Another is the fact that there tends to be in tropical wooded environments three times as many species of epiphytes as there are species of trees (Toledo 96). One orchid-fancier counted 14 species on his farm of a few acres in Puerto Rico (Nir 88). This does not count all those in the canopy which he could not see. The good news is qualified by the fragmentary nature of these refugia. The author attributes the survival of the orchids to the fact that they are all autogamous and wonders if the eventual loss of genetic diversity will cause them to disappear. He puts his hopes as an orchid conservationist in the vast area (about 60,000 ha) of ‘abandoned’ coffee farms in Puerto Rico.
Future research could therefore test not only whether rustic coffee farms are as species-rich in total as the forests but also whether the numeric relationships between different taxa are similar (e.g., 3:1 for epiphytes:trees), which could indicate that shade-coffee farms are not merely rapidly filling and unstable sinks for certain pressured taxa like migrant songbirds but do in fact hold stable ecological relationships similar to larger forest systems.
A word regarding the hopes put on abandoned coffee farms: while ornithologists and other naturalists might be cheered by the sight of abandoned farms reverting to full forest, the people who live in these places see it as a sign of demise and stagnation, especially where coffee has a nostalgic significance for national identity. For example, the description of nature reclaiming old coffee farms in Puerto Rico spells regret and foreboding.
“It is quiet now in the western highlands. Buildings built with majestic hardwoods, once the centers of large coffee haciendas, have long been abandoned and many are in a state of advanced decay. The concrete drying floors have cracked as weeds and even small trees reclaim the land. The paths winding throughout the cafetales are overgrown with brush, and the coffee trees, still present, have reproduced promiscuously [...] The overgrown trails are empty and the men and women of the coffee zones have disappeared. The berries, once the source of prosperity to Puerto Rico, ripen only to fall and rot on the ground.” (Bergard 82)
Foreign conservationists should be mindful of these symbolisms before rejoicing over the abandonment or downsizing of coffee farms or other agricultural sectors.
Coffee - What is it Good For?
Recognizing that coffee cannot be considered traditional in the context of native peoples and recognizing that self-provisioning or self-sufficiency has fairly negative connotations in the history of coffee, how shall those concerned with social justice and biodiversity treat coffee? There are several possibilities. One is to not drink coffee at all, even to boycott it. After all, coffee is not a food - it has no nutritional value. It could even be argued that the 11,000,000 hectares of land and the countless gallons of water, Joules of energy, and hours of labour being taken up by coffee production and roasting could be put to better use. In the sense that coffee is the next-to-largest export commodity in the world, that developing countries have in the past oppressed their people and turned their agricultural sectors upside down to convert to high-yield coffee first for the profit of elites and now to service national debt, coffee is the symbol of everything wrong in the world and the enemy of sustainable development.
But like it or not, the coffee sector is illustrative of the way the world works today. Certainly nothing is gained by romanticizing coffee production and seeing the farmers of Guatemala or Colombia through rose-coloured glasses but neither is there any use in reacting to coffee with political correctness and post-colonial guilt. That the coffee-growing systems of Latin America are not purely traditional or have been founded on unjust actions does not mean that these communities do not now have a culture and an economy that is closely linked to coffee. In other words, to approach the coffee question means dealing with things as they are and not longing for an irretrievable pre-colonial past. Regardless of how the association between coffee and indigenous cultures arose the reality is that the coffee growing areas of Latin American are home today to the most diverse population of people. This fact was driven home at the Coffee Congress by Arturo Gomez-Pompa, who described the ‘triple 60’ rule. Nine countries in the world account for 60% of the world’s biodiversity and 60% of the cultural diversity (measured as number of languages) and also produce 60% of the world’s coffee harvest. The top three of these are Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. (Gomez-Pompa 96). As an example, there are over 100 languages in Oaxaca alone, Mexico’s primary coffee-growing region, and the majority of these are endangered (8) (Toledo 96).
The current wisdom is that countries and individuals both must find a way to be engaged in the global economy or be run over by it. (for arguments for and against this view see Schott 96, Daly 96, Batra 93, Esty 94, Boyer 96). A return to the local may indeed be the answer. Until such a time that local economies are strong enough and self-sufficient enough to survive the vagaries of global market economics, producers and workers need to find a way to participate in the wider cash economy. Coffee is by nature a surplus crop. In a sustainable development scenario fit to the realities of the marketplace, coffee would be produced as much as is ecologically possible but up to the limit that the local economy provides enough foodstuff and other essentials to survive a market crisis.
It is true that the history of coffee in Latin America is the story of stolen land, forced labour, debt peonage, and inhuman working conditions on large plantations. It is also true that the majority of coffee - whether it comes to us through specialty roasters or is pooled by the larger companies, comes from small family farms of a few hectares. Families have organized themselves into co-operatives, collectively negotiating with coffee brokers and using part of their income to benefit the community. Harsh realities and usury are still associated with coffee, such as the seasonal migrations of thousands of migrant workers from Guatemala to Mexico or the exorbitant loans of coffee-trading coyotes. However, to simply reject coffee for its past and lingering inequities would be denying the complexity of the sector today and the importance of the coffee crop to the lives of ordinary people.
In the last few years, community cooperatives have organized into larger national organizations (co-ops of co-ops) such as ASPECAGUA of Guatemala, CNOC and UNCAFESUR of Mexico, UCRAPROBEX of El Salvador, and regional organizations such as UPROCAFE (which includes cooperatives from Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean) and have gained legal personality. These organizations provide technical assistance for forested and organic coffee, including conservation and recycling of water and pulp. These larger organizations can also offer credit to coffee growers. Membership is limited to small producers, for example, fewer than 300 60-kg sacks per year in the case of ASPECAGUA (96). Coffee can be progressive inasmuch as these organizations that on the surface are marketing associations are also providing a political arm for previously marginalized groups.
This paper focusses on Central America and Mexico and not on Colombia and Brazil, the two largest producers of coffee. To some degree, personal interest steered me towards Central America and Mexico in preference to Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, or Africa. However, in general, there is a rationale for focussing on these areas first. As described previously, the situation in Central America and Mexico differs dramatically from coffee cultivation in Brazil and most of Colombia. Specialty coffee brokers have had more access to the smaller producing countries and this has led to the development of certification in these areas. In targeting areas of the world in which to reform coffee the selection criteria that led to the focus area of this paper reflect the priority values or goals of this research:
1. Impact the most area, and therefore have the greatest effect on conservation.
2. Impact the greatest number of farmers and workers.
3. Once feasible, impact areas of highest technification, and therefore have the greatest impact on environmental quality. (10)
An accompanying criteria might be
4. Work in areas where there is already groundwork in coffee reform.
How do these criteria apply to the different coffee-growing regions of the world? Take Mexico, for example. Mexico is the fourth largest coffee producer in the world. What does this mean? Mexico is actually ninth in terms of average crop yield per acre; however, it is the fourth largest in terms of area under cultivation (750,000 ha, CNOC 1996). This combined with the fact that 92% of Mexico’s coffee farmers cultivate holdings less than 5 hectares makes Mexico a valuable target for coffee reform. Mexico’s high biological and cultural diversity also add value. However, it should be remembered that these figures are reported as national characteristics solely because they are collected by national organizations. Rather than nations, specific localities or entire regions need to be targeted and the circumstances of coffee production in Mexico are repeated throughout the region, especially in neighbouring Guatemala.
(End of Section II.)