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Coping with the Coffee Crisis: a Household Analysis of Coffee Producers’ Response to the Coffee Crisis in Polo, Dominican Republic

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Coping with the Coffee Crisis: a Household Analysis of Coffee Producers’ Response to the Coffee Crisis in Polo, Dominican Republic Coping with the Coffee Crisis: A Household Analysis of Coffee Producers’ Response to the Coffee Crisis in Polo, Dominican Republic A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment Of the requirements for the degree Master of Science Katie L. Hammond March 2010 © 2010 Katie L. Hammond. All Rights Reserved 2 Coping with the Coffee Crisis: A Household Analysis of Coffee Producers’ Response to the Coffee Crisis in Polo, Dominican Republic By KATIE L. HAMMOND Has been approved for the Program of Environmental Studies of the College of Arts and Sciences by ____________________________________________ Brad. D. Jokisch Associate Professor of Geography ____________________________________________ Benjamin M. Ogles Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 Abstract HAMMOND, KATIE L., M.S., March 2010, Environmental Studies Coping with the Coffee Crisis: A Household Analysis of Coffee Producers’ Response to the Coffee Crisis in Polo, Dominican Republic (72 pp.) Director of Thesis: Brad D. Jokisch Over the last decade coffee prices have plummeted to historic lows and smallholder coffee farmers throughout Latin America are struggling to adapt to the low market price. With prices unable to cover the cost of production, some coffee farmers have cut ecologically diverse coffee forests to cultivate other crops. This paper examines coffee producers’ reactions to the coffee crisis in Polo, a coffee-dependent village in the Southwest region of the Dominican Republic. Household Interviews were conducted to determine how farmers have been able to weather this economic crisis with coffee forests in tact. Results indicate primarily that availability of arable land in the region has allowed farmers to diversify crops without cutting forests. Further statistical analysis suggests that households with highest and lowest levels of wealth are more likely than households of medium wealth to participate in labor intensive agricultural strategies to weather the crisis. These results provide policy makers a better understanding of the varied response to the global coffee crisis and an illustration of how one rural community of smallholder coffee growers was able to weather the crisis without clearing ecologically diverse coffee forests. ____________________________________________ Brad. D. Jokisch Associate Professor of Geography 4 Dedication Para los Cafetaleros de Polo 5 Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 3 Dedication ........................................................................................................................... 4 List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... 7 List of Tables ...................................................................................................................... 8 Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................... 9 Chapter 2: Coffee and Coffee Crisis ................................................................................. 11 2.1 Coffee Ecology and Cultivation .............................................................................. 11 2.2 Coffee as a Commodity .......................................................................................... 13 2.3 The Coffee Crisis .................................................................................................... 15 Chapter 3: Farmer Decision Making and Response to the Coffee Crisis ........................ 18 3.1 Farmer Decision Making ........................................................................................ 18 3.2 Parallel Studies: Smallholder Response to the Coffee Crisis in Latin America ..... 21 Chapter 4: Research Questions and Study Area ............................................................... 26 4.1 Research Question .................................................................................................. 26 4.2 The Dominican Republic ........................................................................................ 27 Economy of the Dominican Republic ........................................................................ 27 Coffee in the Dominican Republic ............................................................................ 27 4.3 The study area: A small coffee producing village in the Dominican Republic ...... 28 The Municipality of Polo .......................................................................................... 29 Chapter 5: Methodology ................................................................................................... 32 5.1 Methodology of the study ....................................................................................... 32 Secondary Materials In-Country .............................................................................. 32 Interviews with Key Informants ................................................................................ 33 Focus Groups ............................................................................................................ 33 Household Interviews ................................................................................................ 35 5.2 Reliability and Limitations of the Methods ............................................................ 36 Chapter 6: Results ............................................................................................................. 38 6.1 Reduction of Shade-Grown Coffee ......................................................................... 39 6.2 Farmer Response to the Coffee Crisis .................................................................... 40 Agricultural Diversification ...................................................................................... 44 Using the Credit System ............................................................................................ 47 Off-farm Livelihood Diversification ......................................................................... 48 Remittances ............................................................................................................... 50 6.3 Socio-economic Indicators and Land use Change .................................................. 52 The Cultivation of Short-cycle Crops ....................................................................... 55 Chapter 7: Discussion ....................................................................................................... 58 6 7.1 Diversification without deforestation ..................................................................... 58 Land Abundance ....................................................................................................... 58 Economic Opportunity .............................................................................................. 60 Commitment to Coffee............................................................................................... 61 7.2 Levels of Household Diversification and Opportunity Cost of Labor .................... 62 Chapter 8: Conclusions ..................................................................................................... 64 Literature Cited ................................................................................................................. 67 Appendix A: Household Interview Guide ........................................................................ 71 7 List of Figures Page Figure 2.1 Global coffee prices (Source: FAO, 2007) ................................................................... 16 Figure 4.1 Study area: Polo, Dominican Republic ......................................................................... 29 Figure 5.1: Participants from the focus group in Breton ................................................................ 34 Figure 5.2: Coffee co-op presidents participating in a focus group ............................................... 35 Figure 6.1 Frequency table of family members per household .........................................38 Figure 6.2: A small cleared section amongst the coffee farms (Author, 2007) .................40 Figure 6.3: A farmer augments his plantation with new coffee shrubs provided though CODOCAFE (IDIAF, 2007) ..............................................................................................41 Figure 6.4: A Haitian day laborer weeds a coffee farm with a machete ............................42 Figure 6.5: Ill-maintained coffee plot ................................................................................43 Figure 6.6: Amount of land involved in short-cycle crops ................................................45 Figure 6.7: This family gathered sour oranges ..................................................................46 Figure 6.8: This family is with their black bean harvest....................................................46 Figure 6.9: This farmer took advantage of his yard to grow a small crop of lettuce .........47 Figure 6.10: Preparing dough to fry from his home ..........................................................50 Figure 6.11 Migrant destinations among households interviewed ....................................51 8 List of Tables Page Table 3.1 Recent Parallel Studies and Their Findings .......................................................22 Table 6.1: Table
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