Confronting the coffee crisis: Nicaraguan farmers use of cooperative, Fair Trade and agroecological networks to negotiate livelihoods and sustainability

This dissertation poses an interdisciplinary approach to assess smallholders' vulnerabilities and opportunities for sustainable rural development as the global coffee industry restructures. Prices crashed in commercial coffee commodity markets from 1999-2003. Simultaneous to the crisis in commodity prices, alternative trade and production networks, including both certified Fair Trade and organic coffees, have continued rapid growth. "Confronting the coffee crisis" uses livelihood vulnerability, gendered empowerment processes and agro-biodiversity as three interrelated evaluative concepts. These concepts provide points of contact to advance dialogues among the fields of political ecology, agroecology, development studies and rural sociology. Three participatory action-research cycles involving more than 16 cooperatives and 300 Nicaraguan small-scale coffee farmers generated data from multiple sources and supported farmer cooperatives as they struggled to mitigate damage from the coffee crisis and towards achieving their self-defined goals. The findings show that farmers linked to cooperatives and alternative trade networks are less vulnerable to the coffee crisis than those connected only to conventional networks. They also reveal the hybridities within current coffee production and trade practices, including the fact that farmers and cooperatives linked to Fair Trade networks also sell into conventional coffee markets. A comparative analysis of the gendered empowerment process highlights the importance of land reform and collective struggles, demonstrates that certified organic coffee farmers do not necessarily provide more opportunities for women's empowerment, and illustrates the positive social development impacts following the combined efforts of women's grassroots organizing, participation in larger second-level cooperatives and links to international alternative trade and development networks. This study also documented the high levels of agro-biodiversity as measured by coffee shade tree species richness and the presence of orchids. Alternatives reveal their importance during crises in conventional systems. While most smallholders have suffered from the crisis, some have found that their farms, second level cooperatives and links to international alternative trade networks can help reduce vulnerability, conserve agro-biodiversity and support empowerment processes.