Grounds for Agreement : The Political Economy of the Coffee Commodity Chain

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 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, Grounds for Agreement demonstrates that the politically regulated world market that prevailed from the 1960s through the 1980s was more fair for coffee growers than is the current, globalized market controlled by the corporations. Talbot explains why fair trade and organic coffees, by themselves, are not adequate to ensure fairness for all coffee growers and he argues that a return to a politically regulated market is the best way to solve the current crisis among coffee growers and producers. A careful analysis of the politically regulated world coffee market from the 1960s to the 1980s reveals a fairer market than the current globalized de-regulated affair can ever deliver. The author argues that fair trade and organic coffees alone cannot insure fairness for Third World growers and producers