Steps to reduce the use of pesticides in agriculture have been pursued by consumers and non-profit organizations, mainly from wealthy countries, pressuring governments to develop laws against the use of pesticides. Despite legislation that bans or severely restricts highly toxic pesticides, their production and use continue to take place in both developed and developing countries. The demand for healthy food and an improved quality of the environment, however, has led to the development of a new market niche for agricultural commodities grown without industrial inputs. Small-scale farmers from Chiapas are producing chemical free coffee and without government regulations or support. Chiapas has become the leading producing state of certified Environmentally-Friendly (EF) coffee production, and Mexico has become the leading country in exports of EF coffee This research project examines factors that have allowed impoverished small-scale farmers to make the investments necessary to use certified EF production and markets. Surprisingly, given the controversies in the literature about EF farming and Industrial Agriculture (IA), no one so far has investigated this question at an individual level. According to the literature on this issue, the reasons farmers have shifted to EF methods are: the fall in global coffee price; the rising price of pesticides; international economic support; the demand for quality coffee; tradition; promotion by private companies; direct trade links, and participation from NGOs and religious leaders However, the results of the study indicate that leading factors in the farmers' decisions were based on organization, more so than prices. Although the literature claims that the fall in the price of coffee and the rise in the costs of IA accounts for the switch to EF coffee, this project provides evidence farmers were more likely to engage in EF agriculture when they had previous knowledge of costs and benefits of IA and EF farming, received the technical knowledge to engage in EF agriculture, their farms had appropriated physical conditions for coffee production, and had low cost access to compost and other relevant organic inputs. In addition, the survey data show that organizational efforts done principally by a religious and other civic leaders, as well as subsequent monitoring and enforcement services by international organizations, such as Fair Trade created the institutional structure necessary for the EF market. This suggests that farmers sought economic security more than maximization of wealth and the factors above allowed them to find it with EF coffee / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_27372 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Contributors | Amara-Alvarez, Vivian (Author), Kelly, Eamon M (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | Spanish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
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