Fair Trade/Organic Coffee, Rural Livelihoods, and the "Agrarian Question": Southern Mexican Coffee Families in Transition

Bradford L. Barham, Mercedez Callenes, Seth Gitter (), Jessa Lewis and Jeremy Weber

World Development, 2011, vol. 39, issue 1, 134-145

Abstract: Summary We use a random sample of coffee producing households in southern Mexico to compare opportunities associated with government subsidies and migration to the role of Fair Trade/organic coffee in household livelihoods. Although land and labor returns among Fair Trade/organic coffee growers are higher than for conventional growers, differences in yields are more important than price premiums. Moreover, investment in education and labor opportunities outside coffee dominate those in Fair Trade/organic coffee. The results highlight the value of an integrated approach to the agrarian question that improves productivity and prices and supports other pathways for improving incomes.

Keywords: Latin; America; Mexico; Fair; Trade; organic; migration; education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (41)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305-750X(10)00142-7
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:39:y:2011:i:1:p:134-145

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().