* Colorado State University Fair Trade Research Group. One Cup at a Time: Poverty Alleviation and Fair Trade Coffee in Latin America Colorado: 2003
The following literature is listed by specific topic for those seeking
additional information.
General/Comprehensive
Alvarez, Julia. A Cafecito Story. Vermont: Chelsea Green
Publishing, 2001. [Fictional/semi-autobiographical story by famed
writer Julia Alvarez shows the impact of Fair Trade on coffee farmers
as well as coffee drinkers].
Clarke, R. J. and R. Macrae, eds. Coffee. London: Elsevier
Applied Science, 1985. [this multi-volume series is the real deal for
those seeking a detailed technical introduction to coffee from the
international coffee industry's perspective, covering everything from
agronomy, trading, and processing, to history, ecology, and
marketing.]
Coffee, Society, and Power in Latin America. Edited by William
Roseberry, Lowell Gudmundson, Mario Samper Kutschbach. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Dicum, Gregory, and Nina Luttinger.
The Coffee
Book: Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to the Last Drop. New
York: The New Press, 1999. [The best, most current and complete book
on coffee ever written.]
Pendergrast, Mark. Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How
it Transformed Our World. New York: Basic Books, 1999.
Rice, Paul and Jennifer MacLean. Sustainable Coffee at the
Crossroads. Washington, DC: Consumers Choice Council, 1999. [an
important assessment of organic, shade, and Fair Trade Certified
labels and the potential for developing a super seal covering
environmental and social justice issues]
Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of
Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants. New York: Pantheon Books,
1992. [Also not specifically about coffee, this book explores the
impacts of exotic plants on western culture and is certainly relevant]
Ukers, William H. All About Coffee, 2nd ed. New York: The Tea &
Coffee Trade Journal Company, 1935. [though old, this is the seminal
coffee book in the twentieth century. Everything that came since,
particularly in the English language, owes a nod to this tome. A bit
dated, but a very solid introduction, particularly to historical
information.]
Watanabe, John M. Maya Saints and Souls in a Changing World.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992.
Environment
ActionAid UK. Robbing Coffee's
Cradle - GM coffee and its threat to poor farmers (PDF 438kb)
May 2001. [Industrial applications of GM coffee are poised to
fundamentally change coffee production at the risk of putting millions
of smallholder growers out of business.]
Bingham Hull, Jennifer. Can Coffee
Drinkers Save the Rainforest? -- Much of the coffee you drink
is "technified"; "sustainable" coffee often tastes better, besides
being a lot better for the environment. The Atlantic Monthly,
September 1999. [in the web now this is linked to the Atlantic site;
it should be linked to our own copy of the article.]
Pennybacker, Mindy. "Habitat-saving
Habit: Shaded Coffee Plantations Help Preserve Tropical
Rainforests." Sierra. Vol 82 (2): 18 March-April 1997.
Hidalgo-Monroy Wohlgemuth, Neusa. Organic
Agriculture and Indigenous Communities in Chiapas: Mexico: An
Alternative to Rural Development. [large pdf file (7mb)]
University of California at Berkeley: MA Thesis, 1991.
Perfecto, Ivette, Robert Rice, R Greenberg, and M. E. Van der
Voort. Shade Coffee: A Disappearing Refuge for Biodiversity.
Bioscience 46(8) 598-608, 1996.
Proceedings of the First Sustainable Coffee Congress, edited by Rice,
R. A., A. M. Harris, and J. McLean. Washington DC: Smithsonian Migratory Bird
Center, 1997. [this conference is where the sustainable coffee
movement was first articulated explicitly and coherently. The
individual papers in these proceedings give lots of great information
on ecological, social, political, and economic aspects of coffee and
the struggle for sustainability. [Comprehensive and excellent.]
Rice, Robert and Justin Ward. Coffee, Conservation, and Commerce in
the Western Hemisphere: How Individuals and Institutions can Promote
Ecologically Sound Farming and Forest Management in Northern Latin
America. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Migratory Bird
Council and Natural Resources Defense Council, June 1996.
Ryan, John C., and Alan Thein Durning. Stuff: The Secret Lives
of Everyday Things. Seattle: Northwest Environment Watch,
1997. [includes a chapter on coffee that follows a bean from crop to
the last drop]
Wilde, Chris. Clouds in the Coffee: Coffee
Plantations as Bird Habitat. Earth Action Network. Vol 8 (5):
Sept-Oct. 1997.
Wunderle, Joseph M. Jr. Avian Resource
Use of Dominican Shade Coffee Plantations. Wilson Bulletin. Vol
110 (2), June 1998.
Labor
Barry, Tom. Roots of Rebellion. Boston: South End Press,
1987. [a close look at life on the farm in Central America]
Bergquist, Charles W. Labor in Latin America: Comparative Essays on
Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, and Columbia. Stanford, CA 1986.
Menchú, Rigoberta. I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian
Woman in Guatemala. Introduced and Edited by Elisabeth
Burgos-Debray. Translated by Ann Wright. New York: Verso, 1984. [A
moving portrait of plantation conditions for workers]
Multatuli. Max Havelaar. New York: Penguin, 1860. [the Dutch
Fair Trade movement was named after on the exploitative conditions of
coffee plantation farming in Indonesia]
Ortiz, Sutti. Harvesting Coffee, Bargaining Wages; Rural Markets in
Colombia, 1975-1990. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1999.
Paige, Jeffrey M. Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of
Democracy in Central America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1997. [colorful, if somewhat academic, comparative study of Nicaragua,
El Salvador, and Costa Rica that looks at how different bases for the
organization of their respective coffee sectors laid the groundwork
for contemporary political structures and events]
Stolcke, Verena. Coffee Planters, Workers & Wives: Class Conflict
and Gender Relations on Sao Paulo Plantations, 1850-1980. New
York: St. Martin's Press, 1988.
Fair Trade
Barratt Brown, Michael. Fair Trade; Reform and Realities in the
International Trading System. Zed Books, New Jersey, 1993. [this
is an authoritative book on the political economy of commodity trading
and the history of the fair trade movement]
Carrol, John, ed. Making Coffee Strong: Alternative Trading in a
Conventional World. Canton, Massachusetts: Equal Exchange, 1994.
Coffee: Spilling the Beans. The New Internationalist,
No. 271, September 1995.
Hedlund, Hans G. B. Coffee Co-Operatives and Culture: An
Anthropological Study of a Coffee Co-Operative in Kenya. Oxford
University Press: 1993.
James, Deborah. Justice and Java: Coffee
in a Fair Trade Market. North American Congress on Latin
America (NACLA). October 2000.
Mace, Bill. Global Commodity
Chains, Alternative Trade and Small-Scale Coffee Production in Oaxaca,
Mexico. (PDF, 112KB) Miami University MA Thesis, Oxford, Ohio,
1998.
Renard, Marie-Christine. Los Intersticios del la Globalización:
Un Label (Max Havelaar) para los Pequeños Productores de
Café. CEMCA: Mexico City, Mexico, 1999.
Renard, Marie-Christine. The interstices of globalization: The
Example of Fair Coffee. Soliologia Ruralis 39 (4): 484-500.
Tiffen, Pauline, and Zadek, Simon, Dealing
with and in the Global Economy: Fairer Trade in Latin America,
Chapter 6 in Mediating Sustainability, Kumarian Press, 1998.
Thomson, Bob. Lessons Learned: Fair
Trade and CED, November 1995. [paper presented to a conference
on Community Enterprise Development and Globalization]
Waridel, Laure. Coffee With Pleasure: Just Java
and World Trade,
November 2001. [Using the example of the world coffee trade, Laure
Waridel shows how our current trading system perpetuates poverty and
injustice, and explains how the alternative trading system known as
Fair Trade can break the cycle of exploitation and environmental
destruction.]
Political Economy
Bates, Robert H. Open-Economy Politics: The Political Economy of
the World Coffee Trade. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1997. [Exhaustive and excellent review of international coffee
politics in this century that includes thorough discussions of
domestic politics in three of the crucial countries: Brazil, Colombia,
and the United States]
Coffee, Birds, and Trade Policy: Making
the Connection. Seattle Audubon Society, October 1999. [a
discussion of World Trade Organization policies on birds, ecology, and
farmers in the coffee industry]
Coote, Belinda. The Trade Trap: Poverty and the Global Commodity
Markets. Oxford: Oxfam UK, 1996. [a tremendous overview of how the
terms of trade of commodities producers has declined significantly
over the last decades]
Huis in 't Veld, Mark. Coffee: A
Speculator's Plaything. EFTA Fair Trade Yearbook
1997. European Fair Trade Association: January 1998.
Mintz, Sidney W. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern
History. New York: Elisabeth Sifton Books/Viking Penguin Books,
1985. [though not about coffee specifically, this book is an excellent
survey of how a tropical commodity product forms the basis for an
industry of exploitation. Many of the same lessons and historical
trends for sugar are also relevant for coffee]
Oxfam International. Bitter Coffee:
How the Poor are Paying for the Slump in Coffee Prices (PDF 80kb)
Oxfam policy paper. May 2001. [Oxfam has been monitoring the impact
of falling coffee prices on communities across Africa and Latin
America, talking to those most affected by the crisis.]
Sick, Deborah. Farmers of the Golden Bean: Costa Rican Households and
the Global Coffee Economy. Northern Illinois University Press, 1999.
Talbot, John M. 1997. Where Does Your Coffee Dollar Go?: The
Division of Income and Surplus Along the Coffee Commodity Chain.
Studies in Comparative International Development, Vol 32(1): 56-91.
Talbot, John M. 1997. The Struggle for Control of a Commodity
Chain: Instant Coffee from Latin America. Latin American Research
Review. 32(2): 117-135. [these two are very revealing academic papers
that shed some light on the secretive world of transnational value
chains and explain how development and transnational investment can
often be at odds]
Williams, Robert G. States and Social Evolution: Coffee and the Rise
of National Governments in Central America. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1994.
Marketing and Health
Garattini, Silvio. Caffeine, Coffee, and Health. New York: Raven
Press, 1993. [if you manage to read through all of this not
necessarily gripping work, you will never have any questions about the
health effects of coffee ever again]
National Coffee Association. Winter Drinking Survey. New York:
National Coffee Association, 1999. [this annual survey has, for over
forty years, tracked all apects of coffee consumption in the US. These
are the statistics that most discussions of consumption start from]
Schultz, Howard and Dori Jones Yang. Pour Your Heart Into It. How
Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time. New York: Hyperion,
1997. [somewhat of an autohagiography, but nonetheless interesting
background on Big Green]
Tansey, Geoff and Tony Worsley. The Food System: A Guide.
London: Earthscan Publications, Ltd., 1995. [an excellent survey of
the international, corporate food production and marketing system,
with an emphasis on the UK]
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