Shifting coffee markets and producer responses in Costa Rica and Panama

Julia Smith

A chapter in Economic Development, Integration, and Morality in Asia and the Americas, 2009, pp 201-224 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: Developing new markets for small producers has been a major focus of research and development in many parts of the world. Too frequently, the ways in which existing production and market systems constrain producer possibilities has been ignored. This study examines how existing systems have affected coffee farmers in Costa Rica and Panama as they attempt to enter the elite coffee market, which promises higher prices for premium production. In the past 50 years, Costa Rica had created a system quite favorable to small producers in the world coffee market, while Panama had done little. Yet today, the Costa Rican system has proven to be a barrier to entering the highest levels of the coffee market, while the Panamanian system has produced coffees that are currently among the best in the world. The shifting ways in which production and marketing systems connect with world markets and elite taste suggest the necessity of greater sensitivity to how existing systems affect what farmers can and will decide to do.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... 1281(2009)0000029010
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

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:eme:reanzz:s0190-1281(2009)0000029010

DOI: 10.1108/S0190-1281(2009)0000029010

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Research in Economic Anthropology from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().