Coffee Statecraft: Rethinking the Global Coffee Crisis, 1998–2002

Abstract

This paper offers a rethinking of the global coffee crisis from 1998 to 2002. In seeking to account for the crisis, most official international institutions and non-governmental organisations have focused on the dynamics of the coffee market, its volatility and unpredictability, in the wake of the decline of the International Coffee Agreements in 1989. The result has been a dominant consensus around the ‘market’ as the cause of underdevelopment and its potential solution, with the ‘state’ receding ever further into the background. As an alternative to this consensus, this paper argues that the state and the market are inseparable and, more specifically, that coffee statecraft, both good and bad, has been and continues to be central to the everyday operations of the coffee industry. Drawing specifically on the role of the Vietnamese state, it argues that coffee statecraft played a key role in the crisis – typically portrayed as primarily market-driven – and proposes greater attention be paid to the geopolitical actions of southern states, the role of the state during times when it seems most benign or invisible, and the centrality of coffee statecraft in steering development outcomes.

Keywords:

• coffee
• global political economy
• economic statecraft
• international trade
• geopolitics
• Global Value Chains

Notes on contributor

Gavin Fridell is a Canada Research Chair in International Development Studies at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Canada. He is the author of Fair Trade Coffee (2007) and several articles and book chapters on international trade and development, fair trade and free trade, and global political economy. He is currently conducting work on the politics of international trade and alternative trade in coffee, bananas, and wheat, and has forthcoming books with Fernwood Publishing (Canada) and Polity Press (UK).

Notes

1. Unless otherwise stated, the coffee prices quoted in this paper come from UNCTAD (2012). Daily information on coffee trends and prices are also available at the International Coffee Organization website at http://www.ico.org.

2. For critiques of the institutional approach to development, see Leys (1996: 80–103) and Chibber (1999).

3. The historical work of Steven Topik has also indirectly influenced the idea of coffee statecraft as his work has emphasised the agency of Southern states in managing and creating the global coffee economy. See his work in Clarence Smith and Topik (2003).

4. Neoliberal coffee statecraft has often formed part of wider multilateral activities: after 20 years of intense negotiations, in 2012, Russia became a member of the WTO, an event much desired by coffee sectors in Brazil and Africa who have sought greater access to the Russian coffee market, the seventh largest in the world and the largest for instant coffee. It has also taken the form of bilateral or regional activities: in October 2012, after intense pressure on the part of Rwanda, including threats to go to the East African Court of Justice, Tanzania agreed to a bilateral trade agreement in which it would remove non-tariff barriers that inhibit Rwandan goods, in particular coffee, from reaching the international port in Dar-es-Salaam. See Green (2012) and Ojulu (2012).

5. For example, Vietnam was a late entrant into the WTO, becoming a member in 2006, 12 years after the WTO began and many years after it had established itself as a major player in the global coffee market. Vietnam has also been far more reluctant than Latin American countries to take part in ‘sustainable’ coffee certification. By one estimate, 75 per cent of the coffee in Latin American is grown under some sort of ‘sustainable’ criteria – broadly defined – while only 10 per cent falls under this category in Vietnam (Mistiaen 2012).

6. For critiques of the possibilities and limits of fair trade coffee, see Fridell (2007a) and Lyon and Moberg (2010).