Family micro-mills in Tarrazú region: Rethinking the coffee value chain in Costa Rica

Abstract

Specialty roasters and consumers are generating increased demand for ‘socially responsible’ coffees. In Costa Rica’s Tarrazú region, such demand is creating new foodscape of empathy involving small coffee producers. Tarrazu’s coffee production has been defined by a top-down system in which cooperatives and large commercial buyers control processing and international trade, while producers are relegated to activities such as cultivating, picking and delivering coffee beans. Furthermore, the State focuses on commodity production supported by intensive farm systems, high chemical inputs and the promotion of high-yield coffee varieties, impelling farmer dependence on the volatile coffee commodity prices. However, experimentation by coffee producer households with micro-mill ownership – allowing collection and processing of their coffee to be sold in the specialty coffee market – provides insight to both the gendered micro-politics of households and alternative forms of coffee production. Using surveys and in-depth interviews, we found that experiences with individualised market relations contributed to women’s empowerment through leadership capabilities at the processing and value-adding stages, as well as to a coffee economy where profit is not the main aim. Instead, the returns from their market relations extend to social well-being gains. Thus, household micro-mills act to reconfigure practices and identities in the coffee value-chain.