Struggles for autonomy from and within the market of southeast Mexico's small coffee producers

Abstract

This contribution examines the historically shifting reproduction strategies of southeast Mexico's small coffee producers through the lens of autonomy. It argues that producers attempt to create and occupy spaces of relative autonomy from commodity and labour markets while also struggling to exert a degree of control over their commodity market integration – termed here ‘autonomy within the market’. Recent developments in Mexico's coffee sector – falling real prices for certified coffee, an emerging quality programme led by transnational export firms, and devastating crop disease – are transforming coffee growing regions, threatening producer livelihoods and driving diverse reconfigurations of autonomous struggles.

Keywords:

• autonomy
• market
• coffee
• labour markets
• commodity markets
• commoditization

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Leandro Vergara-Camus and the two anonymous reviewers for their advice and comments on the paper. Thanks also to the leaders and members of Impactocafe and the cooperative leaders and members who helped me during my fieldwork.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In the case of Mexico in particular, the vast majority of coffee producers occupy land on the basis of social property relations. The non-commodification of land provides peasants with a greater space within which to exercise autonomy by offering more protection from forces of dispossession than similar producers occupying land under private landed property regimes (Vergara-Camus 2012, 1147–48).

2 In Mexico one sack is equivalent to one ‘quintal’, weighing just over 46 kilograms.

3 Namely UES in 1979, Majomut and UCIRI (La Unión de Comunidades de la Región del Istmo, in Oaxaca) in 1981, and ISMAM in 1985.

4 By the 1990–1991 cycle, real coffee prices had fallen 60 percent from their 1987–1988 level (Moguel 1992, 114).

5 During the 1970s and 1980s coffee plots had themselves become a refuge for peasants who could no longer generate surpluses from corn production (Bartra 2001, 44).

6 Those who remain part of UREAFA, and producers of organic coffee generally, typically employ wage labour for at least one month a year owing to the quality requirements demanded by their cooperatives. (Relatively) high-quality coffees that characterize organic markets require uniformity of grain size and maturity and so must be harvested more intensively (in a smaller harvest window based on optimal cherry ripeness) and more extensively (repeat visits to the plot in order to select cherries only when they ripen). This represents a significant expense that contrasts with conventional producers who typically sell mixed size and maturity beans to local intermediaries which are in turn bought by exporters and used to make blended, low-quality coffees.

7 According to cooperative leaders interviewed, the productivity of their members’ organic coffee plots varies between eight to 15 quintals per hectare. According to regional heads of AMSA in Chiapas, working with the company's plants, inputs and technical assistance, productivity can reach 60 quintals per hectare. However, speaking to producers of the organization Montaña Huixquiliar that worked with AMSA from 2010 to 2013, the maximum productivity any member achieved was 32 quintals per hectare.

8 Catimor is a hybrid created by crossing Brazilian Caturra and the Timor Hybrid, the former characterized by high yields and the latter by its resistance to la roya.

9 The great variation in the productivity effects of la roya reported by producers (30–70 percent drop-off) both among and within coffee growing regions is explained largely by the presence of resistant varieties prior to the outbreak of the fungus.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas Paul Henderson

Thomas Paul Henderson is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Chiapas and the Southern Border (CIMSUR) at The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). His research interests include agrarian political economy, rural social movements, food sovereignty and rural labour in Latin America. He holds a PhD in development studies from SOAS in London and is currently working on a research project investigating the ecological and socioeconomic impacts of coffee rust disease in southeast Mexico.