Production management as an ordering of multiple qualities: negotiating the quality of coffee in Timor-Leste

ABSTRACT

The emergence of close-knit global–local links in many agro-food production systems has necessitated rigorous coordination between the key stakeholders to ensure that quality and safety standards are met. To analyze this new supply chain configuration, agro-food studies inspired by convention theory have drawn significant attention to the plurality of quality conventions. In the literature specifically focusing on the inter-relationships between multiple quality conventions, the ways of interpreting a specific value orientation are perceived to have important implications. This view may lead to a questioning of how the configuration of multiple quality conventions can be stabilized if conflicting justification principles are not easily reconciled. The argument is further connected with an examination of situated plurality in a particular context, focusing on how the boundary among multiple quality conventions is stabilized on the ground. In this paper, through a case analysis of coffee quality management in Timor-Leste, I attempt to demonstrate that commoditization is to be reformulated as the process in which the qualification of objects and regularization of action are constituted through the differentiation of consumable quality as generality from heterogeneous cultural elements as particularity.

KEYWORDS:

• Coffee
• quality conventions
• qualification of objects
• quality uncertainty
• semiotic ideology

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Amalendu Jyotishi for his constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers’ critical comments and insightful suggestions that have significantly improved the argument. The usual disclaimer applies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Tomoaki Kanamaru is a senior researcher at the Indonesia Research Institute in Japan. He has authored several articles on issues related to rural development and agro-food supply chains and also related to the agrarian transformation in Southeast Asia, with a particular emphasis on Timor-Leste and Indonesia. Correspondence can be addressed to [email protected]

Notes

1 As noted by Jagd (2011, p. 345), although the research programme chiefly developed by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot has been denominated by a variety of labels, ‘the label “pragmatic sociology” has increasingly been applied.’ Nevertheless, considering that, in the field of agro-food studies, the ‘convention theory’ label is more familiar, I will use ‘convention theory’ throughout this paper.

2 For a helpful, earlier review of convention theory-inspired agro-food studies, refer to Wilkinson (1997), Raikes et al. (2000), Gibbon and Ponte (2005) and Neilson and Pritchard (2009). More recently, in parallel with the rise of standards-based chain governance, the literature has drawn significant attention to multi-stakeholder standards as institutional governance. For the latter, see Ouma (2010) and Ponte and Cheyns (2013). A recent article by Ponte (2016) can be regarded as a comprehensive review of the literature over the last two decades.

3 The term ‘double plurality’ is used by Thévenot (2007, p. 418) to designate the combination of the two kinds of plurality: the vertical plurality of pragmatic regimes of engagement and that of orders of worth, which ‘distinguishes cognitive and evaluative formats which are involved in justifiable action engagements.’

4 The field survey for this study was undertaken within my work commitment as an independent coffee consultant to a local coffee export company in Timor-Leste. The company, as an affiliated export agent of a Japan-based fair-trade group, deals, in principle, with rural-smallholder organizations. Between August 2010 and November 2012, I spent 15 months in Timor-Leste, conducting a series of activities to coordinate the export of coffee with organic certification. I would like to express my gratitude to all my colleagues in the company and to the coffee growers with whom I communicated.

5 Two species of coffee are traded internationally: Arabica and Robusta. Although both species are generally well-suited to the natural conditions of Timor-Leste, the production of Robusta, in terms of export volume, is nearly negligible compared to Arabica. Varieties of Arabica are generally characterized by higher quality and suitability for cultivation at high elevations (i.e. over 800 m above sea level). In most coffee-related policy documents, much emphasis has been placed on marketing strategies based on organic certification (see, Moreno 2000, p. 12) and quality production.

6 These are Cooperativa Café Timor, Timor Corp, Timor Global and ELSAA Café. Although each of these exporters owns large-scale processing facilities, each has adopted a different purchasing pattern. If Indonesia-based commercial companies are included, the number of large-scale coffee exporters involved in Timor-Leste increases to five or six (cf. DA 2009).

7 It is generally recommended that red cherries be de-pulped within 8–12 h of harvesting, although it is actually difficult to fulfil this requirement in present-day Timor-Leste due to the extremely poor road conditions in the rural areas.

8 Coffee fruit roughly consists of its seeds and a four-layered skin structure. When red cherries are de-pulped, their outer skin (i.e. exocarp) and flesh (i.e. mesocarp) are removed, but the parchment (i.e. endocarp) and the inner silver skin (i.e. spermoderm) remain. When the moisture content is reduced to 10–12%, these beans, actually coffee seeds with a two-layered skin, are called dry parchment. Please note, as explained below, there are three possible methods of primary processing when converting red cherries to green coffee beans.

9 In this paper, these procedural recommendations are treated as important aspects of coffee quality standards widely shared by international traders and coffee experts.

10 The quality implication of this fermentation process is not unanimously agreed upon among coffee experts.

11 More generally, coffee processing is classified in two categories: wet and dry. A typical example of wet processing is exhibited by purchasing pattern A, which involves large-scale mechanical operations. Dry processing typically refers to a ‘natural’ process such as the one listed in Table 2. It is in this sense that the methods listed in Table 2 are a result of site-specific activities, rather than generally applicable alternatives.

12 In fact, coffee fermentation in many producing countries is conducted in the form of ‘dry fermentation,’ whereby wet parchments are not fully submerged in water. In this sense, ‘dry fermentation’ itself is not unusual. Rather, its uniqueness is derived from the expectation of the buyer. Moreover, my argument here is primarily concerned with the knowledge processes through which the site-specific negotiation between producers and buyers is organized in somewhat heterogeneous ways, through the concept of quality.

13 Generally, in this area, washed parchment takes three to five days to be properly dried, and unwashed parchment takes two weeks at the longest. Of course, the length of the drying period depends on microclimatic conditions.

14 It is important to note, as Keane (2003, p. 419) emphasized, that any semiotic ideology does not consist of the totalized network of the meanings and is always open to unrealized applicability: ‘semiotic ideologies are not just about signs, but about what kinds of agentive subjects and acted-upon objects might be found in the world. There is no reason to conclude, however, that semiotic ideologies are total systems capable of rendering all things meaningful.’