A Place Unbecoming: The Coffee Farm of Northern Latin America^*

* I would like to thank the reviewers and editors of the Geographical Review for their helpful comments and guidance. All expressed opinions and any errors, of course, are mine.

Abstract

This article examines recent transformations of the coffee landscape of northern Latin America through the optic of “place as process.” As coffee became the most important regional export crop, its “place” evolved. Coffee lands in northern Latin America now embrace 3.1 million hectares, often contiguous across international borders. Like many agricultural systems, coffee has succumbed to intensification, a process termed “technification” in the Latin American setting. The result is a landscape mosaic in which a traditional agro‐forest coffee system coexists with coffee lands transformed by modernization. The institutional forces behind this process, as well as some of its social and ecological consequences, are discussed.

• biodiversity
• coffee
• landscape
• Latin America
• place
• shade

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert A. Rice

Dr. Rice is a geographer at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, National Zoological Park, Washington, D.C. 20008.