Grounds for Agreement

The Political Economy of the Coffee Commodity Chain

By: John M. Talbot

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eText | 29 July 2004 | Edition Number 1

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As the popularity of coffee and coffee shops has grown worldwide in recent years, so has another trend-globalization-which has greatly affected growers and distributors. This book analyzes changes in the structure of the coffee commodity chain over the period since World War II. It follows the typical consumer dollar spent on coffee in the developed world and shows how this dollar is divided up among the coffee growers, processors, states, and transnational corporations involved in the chain. By tracing how this division of the coffee dollar has changed over time, it demonstrates that the politically regulated world market that prevailed from the 1960s through the 1980s was fairer for coffee growers than is the current, globalized market controlled by the corporations. Grounds for Agreement explains why fair trade and organic coffees, by themselves, are not adequate to insure fairness for all coffee growers, and argues that a return to a politically regulated market is the best way to solve the current crisis among coffee growers and producers.