Content area
Full text
Confronting the Coffee Crisis: Fair Trade, Sustainable Livelihoods, and Ecosystems in Mexico and Central America. Christopher Bacon, V. Ernesto Méndez, Stephen Gliessman, David Goodman, and Jonadian Fox, (eds). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. Pp. xii and 400, 15 illustrations, notes, and index. $27.00 paper (ISBN 978-0-262-52480-3).
As the lengthy tide indicates, this is a very ambitious volume in its analysis of a variety of Mesoamerican responses to the crisis in the global coffee industry precipitated by the collapse in 1989 of the International Coffee Agreement (ICA) and the subsequent decline in prices paid to farmers for their product. This interdisciplinary effort goes far beyond the ramifications of that on-going crisis to study various coffee production systems utilized by the region's small-scale producers who are the primary focus of the study. In doing so, it also considers a variety of social and environmental factors as well as introducing the many external actors involved in the region's industry, including NGOs and several organizations that work with alternative trade systems, organic labeling, and fair trade certification. It is important to note, however, that this is not intended to provide an overview of Mesoamerica's coffee industry; the dominant corporate sector is not analyzed beyond its recent flirtations with several forms of alternative trade.
The multi-dimensionality of the subject material is matched by the diversity of the editors and individual chapter authors. The book, comprised of 14 chapters, has five editors and an additional 12 contributing authors. They represent a mix of disciplines including agro-ecology, social anthropology, plant and soil science, geography, Latin American studies, and environmental studies. Several are/were practitioners with development or...