Mexico being by by globalization : the coffee example


In Mexico, coffee is produced in twelve states. The main producing states are Chiapas, Veracruz and Oaxaca. More than 3 million people depend on coffee production, including farmers, their families and hired manual labour. The majority of the Mexican farmers have no means of transporting their crops to export centers. They must use networks of local and regional intermediaries. The coffee fields covers an area of 713,095 hectares making Mexico the sixth largest coffee producing country in the world. On average, 91.3% of the producers own less than five hectares and of these, 71.2% own less than two hectares.

The earthquake that shook the coffee fields in 1989 barely affected your morning cup of coffee. Yet, that year, coffee producers around the world were going through a tough time...

The end of the International Coffee Agreement, which since 1962 had civilized the coffee market through exportation control and quotas, caused a 70% price decrease. Such a shock had worldwide effects. Wherever farmers earn their living from coffee beans. In Mexico, the crisis was coupled with neo-liberal policies that cause structural, financial and socio-economical crisis for small scale coffee producers.

The end of state intervention in the coffee culture culminated with the dismantling of INMECAFE, the Mexican Coffee Institute. The small producers that INMECAFE had forced on the road of the “green revolution” were stuck with a variety of hybrid coffee sub-species that required a lot of chemical pesticides and maintenance. The Institute, which became famous for its research and development in the coffee sector, vanished, along with its “green” secrets and its 30 years of research and technical assistance.

That same year, 25 independent Mexican organizations joined to form the CNOC, the Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones Cafetaleras, an association of small scale coffee producers unions. The CNOC became the mediator, thus filling the administrative and organizational gaps the state left to producers by elaborating new association and marketing models.

With the deregulation of the coffee growing industry, small scale coffee growers were facing two possible scenarios; commercial dependency to local brokers or new organizational models.

Since the 1970s, a handful of cooperatives have slowly emerged in the farming community, offering small producers new association perspectives and access to Fair Trade markets. These markets would allow them to gain fairer prices for their products.

Today, a majority of Mexican small producers have joined the CNOC, which owns the brand known as Aztec Harvest. CNOC members can export their coffee through its processing and sales infrastructure, avoiding a series of intermediaries, thus gaining greater revenues. CNOC offers an alternative to major coffee traders who reap large profits from the instability of the coffee growing industry and the slump in global trading.