1. Jorge Villanueva
Dr. Soliz
LTAM 4600
11/07/2016
Costa Rica and Coffee
Introduction
We live in a coffee culture, for many of us a cup coffee is an essential part of our daily
ritual. And with so much coffee demand, the coffee producing countries should be thriving. This
is the case of Costa Rica, whose main cash crop in the 20th century was coffee and it thrived
because of this. Costa Rica continues to thrive economically, but it is due to other economic
factors like the tourism industry. Coffee was made for Costa Rica, more specifically Costa Rica’s
central valley, where about 70% of Costa Ricans live. There are many factors that help explain
why Costa Rica should be a thriving coffee producer, many of these factor were push factors for
the Costa Rican coffee increased production, which I have I identified that happened between
1989-2001.Costa Rica annual production averaged 2.1 million bags between during the time of
the coffee boom compared to 1.2 million bags between 1963/64 and 1989/90.1 This coffee
increase affected economic and social aspects of Costa Rican life. But, what were the reasons for
the sudden coffee production increase? and what effect has coffee production had on Costa Rican
society? Although it was such a profitable industry, in 2001 the production of coffee in Costa
Rica suddenly declined. So, why would one of the world's leading coffee producers decrease its
Arabica coffee production? This are complex questions that have more than one answer to them.
1
International Coffee Council, World coffee trade (1963 – 2013):A review of the markets,challenges
and opportunities facing the sector (London, United Kingdom: International Coffee Organization)
2. Villanueva 2
This research explains the reasons why this coffee increased production (1989-2001) started to
decline around 2001 and the reasons why it has continued a steady decline, while also exploring
the social effects of coffee and coffee workers on Costa Rican society. First of all, we will
explore what scholarly men and women have said about my topic in a section called,
Historiography. After that, the paper will explain that the main reason that Costa Rica increased
its production in 1989 was the stability of the country as well as the instability of Costa Rica’s
neighbors which brought foreign investment. After that, the paper will talk about the effects of
coffee immigration on Costa Rican society. Then we will discuss what happened in the coffee
increased production (1989-2001) and its peak in 1994, when Costa Rica produced around $330
million dollars in coffee. This part will include a section to talk about the workforce and engine
of this coffee production, immigration. The final part of this research will explore the reasons
why coffee production declined in 2001 and why it has continued a steady decline up until today.
This reasons for the decline of coffee production in 2001 were the development of a malign
fungus called la roya, or coffee leaf rust, also the increase in global market competitiveness, that
led to a price decline on coffee produces, and the global decrease in price due to global
overproduction, and in specific we’ll explore the case of Vietnam and how they decreased Costa
Rican coffee production.
Historiography
First, to understand the importance of coffee in Costa Rica we must know some of the
things that previous scholars have said about the history of coffee in Costa Rica and about the
history of coffee as a commodity in Costa Rica. It is important to know that coffee has a cultural
tradition in Costa Rica. was not always a coffee society, but from very early on in their history
they adopted coffee as one of its main crops. The Arabica coffee bean arrived to Costa Rica in
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the late 18th century from Ethiopia. There are accounts of as early as 1840s of coffee being the
king of exports in Costa Rica. These accounts tell us that the coffee boom in the 1990s was not
the first coffee boom in Costa Rica. There was a coffee boom in 1832, when Jorge Stipiel
became the first exporter of coffee when he successfully started exporting coffee to Chile. This
boom that lasted around 12 years and it transformed the life of Costa Ricans from poverty to
wealth. This coffee boom didn’t stop there, between 1850 and 1890, the sale of coffee accounted
for 90% of the country's export earnings 2
Something else that has been said by historians about the cultivation of coffee in Costa
Rica is the advantages that Costa Rica has to grow and cultivate coffee. In his analysis of
Arabica coffee production in Costa Rica, Dr. Oscar E. Rojas shows the great advantages that
Costa Rica has to cultivate Arabica coffee. Coffee in Costa Rica is cultivated in the central
valley, which consists of plains, although it is highlighted by mountains and volcanoes. This
Costa Rican central valley gathers ideal conditions for the cultivation. The central valley counts
with very fertile soil of volcanic origin and of very low acidity, this soil is compared to the soil
found in countries like Colombia, and Kenya, two coffee giants. The central valley also counts
with convenient altitude of between 800 to 1,600 meters above sea level. The temperature in the
central valley is also of convenience to growing the Arabica coffee bean, as it ranges from 17 to
25 degrees Celsius. At the time he wrote this, Dr. Rojas argued also that the Arabica coffee had a
2
Palmer, Steven Paul., and Iván Molina Jiménez. The Costa Rica Reader: History, Culture, Politics.
Durham: Duke University Press,2004, 55-71.
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lot of potential in Costa Rica and that implementation of new and modern techniques and
investment in the application of these would be very profitable.3
Something else that historians have commented about the increase of production of
coffee in Costa Rica is the Nicaraguan revolution which caused many coffee workers to move
from Nicaragua to Costa Rica in search for jobs and to escape the turmoil that Nicaragua was
experiencing. Dr. Forrest Colburn treats the specific case of Nicaraguan coffee planters. In
Nicaragua coffee production before the revolution had experienced a great increase. From 1960
to 1979, coffee exports had experienced a 49% increase before the revolution. Before the
revolution the government played a minimal role in the production of coffee since they only
collected taxes, but when the revolution took place, the Nicaraguan government decided that
they would buy all the coffee produced privately and they would export it. The monopsony of
coffee allows the government to set prices and control the income of producers. Producers were
slashed about 1 Cordoba for every dollar produced. Meanwhile, when compared to Costa Rican
coffee producers, Costa Rican producers received nearly 4 times as much for their coffee as did
Nicaraguan producer. Nicaraguan coffee producers claimed that there was little incentive to
produce coffee. The revolution limited the ability of coffee growers to respond to the lack of
incentives by cutting back production since anyone who did not produce ran the risk of having
their farm confiscated. The fear of having their land confiscated was the only reason that
producers didn’t stop production of coffee in Nicaragua after the revolution. On top of these
difficulties, the Marxist-Leninist leanings of the National Directorate of the FSLN led the private
3
Oscar E. Rojas, Zonificación agroecológica para el cultivo de café (Coffea arabica) en Costa Rica
(San José, Costa Rica: INSTITUTO INTERAMERICANODE COOPERACIÓNPARALA
AGRICULTURA,1987) 3-13, 24-25.
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sector to question its future in Nicaragua. This is one of the main points of my argument, that
investors and producers immigrated along with the workforce to Costa Rica because of the
difficulties they faced in Nicaragua.4
The last piece of historiography about Costa Rica and coffee that will be analyzed in his
research is about the way in which Costa Ricans and other Central-American countries viewed
coffee and the social role that coffee plays in their societies. The scholar Mario Samper
researched this topic in 1993, shortly after the expansion in Costa Rican coffee production. He
argued that unlike their Central-American neighbors Costa Rica viewed coffee as a democratic
and social crop. Samper explains that coffee served as an economic livelihood of a rural middle
class whose coffee production is based on paid immigrant workers. 5
Coffee Production Increase (1989)
When thinking about the beginnings of this coffee increased production, one has to think
about the reasons of why Costa Rica was such an attractive place for producing coffee. One of
the factors that led to Costa Rica’s coffee increased production was appeal to investors,
particularly foreign investors. This will include their political history of being a peaceful nation
and their neighbors’ history of violence. Declared as the Switzerland of America6, Costa Rica’s
long history of being the most successful democratic experiment among its often feuding Central
4
Colburn, Forrest D. "Class, State, and Revolution in Rural Nicaragua: The Case of Los Cafetaleros."
The Journal of Developing Areas 18, no. 4 (1984): 501-18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4191293.
5
SAMPER,Mario. "LOS PAISAJES SOCIALES DEL CAFÉ. REFLEXIONES COMPARADAS."
Caravelle (1988-), no. 61 (1993): 49-60. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40853409.
6
"UN PAIS PARA EL NOBEL DE LA PAZ,"Nuevo Herald, El (Miami, FL), May 26, 1983: 7,
accessed December 07,2016,
http://infoweb.newsbank.com/resources/doc/nb/news/0EB9611FEC8D2BCA?p=WORLDNEWS.
6. Villanueva 6
American neighbors, which include Panama and Nicaragua.7 To understand this, we must know
the conflicts that were going on these neighboring countries of Panama and Nicaragua at the
beginning of the increased production of coffee in Costa Rica.
In 1989, the beginning of the coffee increased production in Costa Rica, Panama was
experiencing a United States invasion because of their president Manuel Noriega. The United
States had deployed 18,000 soldiers to Panama in 1989 to protect American citizens that lived in
Panama and were threatened by the anti-American dictatorship that Manuel Noriega was
running.8 Another reason that the United States invaded Panama was that the country was an
important part of drug trafficking to the United States. President George Bush justified the
invasion by saying “The goals of the United States have been to safeguard the lives of
Americans, to defend democracy in Panama, to combat drug trafficking and to protect the
integrity of the Panama Canal Treaty”9
To the northern border of Costa Rica, their Nicaraguan neighbors, long had been going
through conflicts of their own (1979-1990). Like Costa Rica, they also had a long culture of
coffee production as coffee became Nicaragua’s main cash crop in 1891.10 Although it was
7
Redactor de El Nuevo Herald, GUY GUGLIOTTA. "ESTABILIDAD DE COSTA RICA ATRAE A
LOS INVERSIONISTAS," Nuevo Herald, El (Miami, FL), June 25, 1989: 3B, accessed December 07,
2016, http://infoweb.newsbank.com/resources/doc/nb/news/0EB963DA063AD6CF?p=WORLDNEWS.
8
Bee Washington bureau chief, LEO RENNERT. "BUSH SENDS TROOPS 1,800 US SOLDIERS
ORDERED TO PANAMA,"Fresno Bee,The (CA), May 12, 1989: A1, accessed December 07,2016,
http://infoweb.newsbank.com/resources/doc/nb/news/0EAE83A4C4236F9E?p=WORLDNEWS.
9
“A Transcript for Bush’s Address on the Decision to Use Force in Panama.” The New York Times,
December 20, 1989. http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/21/world/fighting-panama-president-transcript-
bush-s-address-decision-use-force-panama.html?pagewanted=print (Accessed November11,1989).
10
Pan American Union. Coffee: Extensive Information and Statistics. Washington: Govt. Print. Off.,
1902, page 22
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surpassed by cotton in the 1950s, it experienced its own coffee increased production from 1960
through 1979. But government was mainly responsible for the decreased coffee production
because they had a monopoly. The monopoly allowed the government to set prices and control
the income of producers and this caused little incentive for coffee producers to produce coffee.11
But conflicts in the country pushed many coffee workers to migrate south all the way to Costa
Rica. In the 1980s Nicaragua went through a civil war where Sandinistas and American-
supported contras met in arms. This was also a push factor for coffee production to move
elsewhere. Where conflict is, investors don’t want to invest, instead many of them try to take out
their investments, as history will tell us.12 An example of a contemporary situation is what is
going on in Venezuela, when the government started nationalizing businesses and chaos erupted
in Venezuela, most foreign investors took out as much investment as they could rescue before it
was too late.
The opposite happened in Costa Rica, a country always known for their peacefulness and
economic, social, and cultural order. We are talking about a country that abolished their army in
following WWII in 1948. The seeming disorder in neighboring countries brought investment in
the coffee sector of Costa Rica. Costa Rica at the time was seen as a banana republic by the
United States, but the truth was that the country was developing into a sophisticated little
11
Colburn, Forrest D. "Class, State, and Revolution in Rural Nicaragua: The Case of Los Cafetaleros."
The Journal of Developing Areas 18, no. 4 (1984): 502-510. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4191293.
12
Moffett III, George D.. "Reagan's Imprint on FOREIGN AID; - From coffee to cucumbers: Costa
Rica uses US aid to diversify its exports," Christian Science Monitor, The (Boston, MA), May 23, 1985:
19, accessed December 07,2016,
http://infoweb.newsbank.com/resources/doc/nb/news/13DF82EC541C3950?p=WORLDNEWS.
8. Villanueva 8
country. They were four billion dollars in debt, when the foreign investments came in due to a
complete economic crash in 1982. 13
There was an important character that possibly was responsible for the foreign investment
interest, Oscar Arias. Oscar Arias was the president of Costa Rica between 1986 and 1990 in his
first term and from 2006 to 2010 in his second term. You could say he began and ended the
coffee increased production, or was at least a protagonist. What president Oscar Arias did was he
was the main architect of a treaty signed by all Central-American countries to foment peace
amongst nations in a time of great turmoil. For this, Oscar Arias won the Nobel prize for peace in
the year of 1987, beating out Nelson Mandela and others for the award.14 This idea of Costa Rica
being a very peaceful country surrounded by countries that were constantly in turmoil was what
attracted many investors. This inversion in Costa Rica went mostly towards the expansion and
the creation of more coffee plantations.
When we think about the coffee increased production we have to look to point out the
factors that pushed the coffee production to new heights and I would look no further than
immigration as the main factor in the increased coffee production. The engine that powered this
coffee increased production was immigration. Some of the immigrant workers came from
Panama but mainly they came from Nicaragua. These immigrants were escaping conflicts that
13
Fraser,Bruce W.. "Costa Rica Woos Foreign Investors," CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR,April
13, 1989: page 9, accessed November 06, 2016,
http://infoweb.newsbank.com/resources/doc/nb/news/0EB41DCA0F5CFBB8?p=WORLDNEWS.
14
(REUTER-AP). "Costa Rica leader wins peace prize Oscar Arias surprise choice observers say,"
Toronto Star, The (Ontario, Canada), October 13, 1987: A2, accessed December 07,2016,
http://infoweb.newsbank.com/resources/doc/nb/news/10C2D6ABA207F9A0?p=WORLDNEWS.
9. Villanueva 9
their countries were going through as explained previously. Many coffee planters that lived in
Nicaragua were suddenly left without a home after the civil war started. Many of these planters
chose to find refuge in the closest place of comfort, in this case it was Costa Rica, a country that
had been running a democracy for about 100 years. But many of these immigrants didn’t come
legally move to Costa Rica, but they chose to move illegally to the country. In 1989 it was
estimated that there were around 200,000 Nicaraguan refugees living in Costa Rica, but of those
200,000 only 42,000 were registered as refugees. This is a significant number of people in a
country that only had a population of about 2.7 million people. It is important to understand that
the reason that the majority of Nicaraguans living in Costa Rica are not registered as refugees is
because of how high the price Nicaraguans have to pay to become a legal refugee is very unfair,
Apart from the price, it is not difficult to become a legal refugee, since almost everyone who
asks and has the money to pay the fee gets to become a registered refugee, even though the Costa
Rican government knows that many times Nicaraguan lie about being persecuted by the army.15
The main reason why a refugee would not become a registered refugee in Costa Rica was the
steep prices.One refugee commented in 1993 “The major difficulty was economic since in 1986
[is that] a refugee had to deposit 12,000 colones (US$230) and pay 3,000 colones (US$ 58)
annually, in addition to lawyers’fees [of] 1,500 colones (US$ 290) to obtain this status. Although
I could not obtain exact figures, I would estimate that 80 percent of the Central Americans
who became citizens each month were not refugees, but better off economic migrants.”16
15
Sick, Deborah. "Coffee, Farming Families, and Fair Trade in Costa Rica: New Markets,Same Old
Problems?" Latin American Research Review 43, no. 3 (2008): 193-208.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20488155.
16
Tanya Basok, Keeping heads above water : Salvadoran refugees in Costa Rica (Quebec, Canada:
McGill-Queen’s Press,1993), 37
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Although illegal refugees were safe from the struggles of living in post-civil war Nicaragua, and
they instantly joined the agricultural workforce of Costa Rica, they did not enjoy from the same
benefits that legal Nicaraguan refugees enjoyed. The undocumented refugees could not benefit
from the health care system that was given for free to the general population. They also could not
send their children to school, instead the children started working from very young ages. 17
There was also a second type of Nicaraguan immigrant in Costa Rica. It is also important
to know that not every refugee that came to Costa Rica came to do honest work and help support
their families, some of them had fought in the Nicaraguan civil war for either the contras or the
Sandinistas and were came to Costa Rica to continue living troubled lives. Many of them came
to commit crimes. Unlike the other type of Nicaraguan immigrants, these violent immigrants
didn’t come to take part of the agricultural labor force but instead they formed gangs, and took
part of illicit activities. That is why the Costa Rican government accused the Nicaraguan
government of “exporting its ills” meaning sending their worst citizens to Costa Rica to commit
crimes. It almost sounds familiar to some of the things a certain U.S. president-elect has said.
Costa Ricans were not too fond of these “Nicas”, and they traditionally have stereotyped all
Nicaraguans as violent, dirty, disease-ridden, and Costa Ricans were not happy that the refugees
had affected the number of jobs available to them. 18
Despite their distrust of Nicaraguans and refugees in general, Costa Rica constructed the
most generous plan for support of the refugees in all of Central America. Along with the United
17
*, DAVID PULVER. "COSTA RICA:FAVORED FIRST ASYLUM FOR MANY REFUGEES
FIVE PEOPLE CAN SPONSORA REFUGEE," Kingston Whig-Standard, The (Ontario, Canada),
February 28, 1989, accessed November 17, 2016,
http://infoweb.newsbank.com/resources/doc/nb/news/14F43FAB89A00510?p=WORLDNEWS.
18
Pulver.
11. Villanueva 11
Nations, Costa Rican president Oscar Arias devised a plan to help Nicaraguan refugees get
involved in the economy. This presented a great opportunity to integrate the refugees into the
growing agricultural sector. This, along with the number of jobs available, helped attract the
attention of Nicaraguans. There was a scarce of workers for the seasonal exports of coffee,
banana, and sugar and these immigrant workers came to fill these roles.
It could be debated that the social effects of the Nicaraguan immigration to Costa Rica
are greater that the economic effects. Costa Ricans during the years of the coffee boom
developed a generalized xenophobia, or fearing of foreigners. The study of race in Costa Rica is
interesting because from earlier waves migrations that were smaller than the Nicaraguan
migration, there were sign that pointed towards Costa Ricans not liking immigrants. A study of
the Salvadoran immigration to Costa Rica shows that “Salvadoran refugees were perceived as a
threat to national security and were subjected to harassment, and it was common for the media to
unleash an anti-refugee campaign.”19 From this, we know that there was a precedent of
xenophobia towards immigrants and refugees that the Costa Rican society had adopted.
The Nicaraguan refugees and labor immigrants suffered the same consequences when
they arrived to Costa Rica. Costa Ricans blamed Nicaraguans or better known as “nicas” for
most of the problems in the country, Nicaraguans are associated with criminal activity. A quote
from a Costa Rican newspaper article about the general opinion of Costa Ricans about
immigrants coming into the Costa Rica from Nicaragua and spreading Marxist ideas: “Apart
from engaging themselves in activities which are publicly denounced as dangerous for national
security, Marxist foreigners allow themselves the luxury of criticizing and insulting the
19
Basok, 32-33
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government . . . in its own territory. This simply is incredible.”20 This shows the little tolerance
that Costa Ricans had for immigrants. Even though there were some bad apples, it is simply
unfair to generalize conclusions about a whole nation, and this is what Costa Ricans did to
Nicaraguan immigrants. Even though some immigrants did come, not with the intention of
bettering themselves, but with the same mindset they left Nicaragua with. This is of course unfair
to the hardworking peasants that did come to Costa Rica to work on coffee plantations and to
look for better opportunities for themselves.
Over the following decade, coffee production would thrive in Costa Rica thanks in no
small part to the aforementioned reasons. It surpassed bananas as the main cash crop of the Costa
Rican economy. and over the period listed for the coffee boom (1989-2001), Costa Rica exported
at least 2,000 bags of 60 kilograms of coffee yearly. 21 With the peak year being 1993 when
Costa Rica produced 2,998 bags of 60 kilograms of coffee and of that number, Costa Rica
exported 2,431 bags of 60 kilograms. This was not the year that Costa Rica exported the most
coffee, that would be 1996 when it exported 2,430 bags of 60 kilograms.22
The peak year of coffee production in Costa Rica was 1994 when Costa Rica counted
with the previously explained circumstances of counting with foreign investment, and having the
workforce thanks to the immigration of coffee workers from Nicaragua. On top of that the world
prices of coffee increased. at one point the price for the pound of coffee was priced at 1.67 $/lb.
20
Kibreab, Gaim. "Citizenship Rights and Repatriation of Refugees."The International Migration
Review 37, no. 1 (2003): 52. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30037818.
21
ICO “Total production by all exporting countries.” International Coffee Organization (2016)
22
ICO “Exports of all forms of coffee by all exporting countries” International Coffee Organization
(2016)
13. Villanueva 13
This price more than doubled the price of the previous year, 1993. 23 This reason would prove to
be one of the factors for the decline of the coffee boom in Costa Rica.
Decline in coffee production (2001-2012)
After years of coffee thriving as an export of Costa Rica, the industry entered into a
decline that to this day exist. How and why did this happen? It is important to understand that the
coffee production decline did not occur over night but instead it tool years for coffee production
to decline. A market does not become obsolete overnight, and this is the case for Costa Rican
coffee. There are many reason for the decline of coffee production in Costa Rica and they
occurred in a sequence of seven years. It was not only one event that caused the coffee industry
to come to a decline, but it was multiple events. From 2001, where we saw the first signs of a
decline, to where now we see the end of a period in Costa Rica’s history that brought economic
prosperity but it also brought a social separation, discrimination at the expense of Nicaraguan
immigrants.
The first event that caused the coffee industry to collapse happened in 2001. But as we
know, if something happens to the industry today, the results would show in next year’s analysis.
According to the numbers. the first significant decline is recorded on 2002, when the number of
60 kilogram bags of coffee produced declined from 2,419 to 2,247. This number may not seem
like a great decline but if we start doing the numbers, at the price in which coffee was being sold
by the pound, which was 46 cents, 172 bags of 60 kilograms comes out to be valued a little over
a million dollars. The reason for this first sign of a declined industry was the price decline from
23
Herald Staff Writer, TIM JOHNSON. "WHERE THE COFFEE IS RICH AND GROWERS MAY
SOON BE," Miami Herald, The (FL), January 30, 1995: 1A, accessed December 07,2016,
http://infoweb.newsbank.com/resources/doc/nb/news/0EB4D13B9CDE5A82?p=WORLDNEWS.
14. Villanueva 14
1999 to 2001. In 1999 the price for Costa Rican coffee was at 79 cents per 60-kilogram bag of
coffee, but seemingly over the span of 2 years the price for Costa Rican coffee was all the way
down to 46 cents. The problem was not Costa Rican coffee but it was a global problem, and not
only Costa Rica was affected by this but many countries that also relied on coffee in their
economies. The global price of the Arabica coffee, which Costa Rica exclusively makes, was
down from 108 cents per pound in 1999 to 64 cents in 2001. The reason for the decline has to do
with the overproduction of coffee in the world. In 2000 the world production was of 112 million
bags of 60 kilograms, but the estimated world consumption was of 103 million bags. This
overproduction of 9 million bags, is a problem that was resolved by a stock retention, meaning
that countries had couldn’t export more than 80% of the coffee they produced. This stock
retention essentially slashed the prices of coffee globally because the law of supply and demand
says that where there is more supply than demand, then the price must be decreased..24 This was
the turning point for coffee production in Costa Rica who after, this price reduction never
produced coffee in the same quantities. In fact, the only two years they produced more than
2,000 bags of 60 kilograms of coffee was 2002 and 2003. After that they have tried to improve
coffee production, but have failed to surpass 2,000 bags a year a number they easily achieved
during the year of the coffee boom.
The second factor that deteriorated the coffee production in Costa Rica was international
competition in the coffee industry. More specifically, the sudden growth of Vietnam's coffee
24
SULLIVAN,RUTH. "COMMODITIES & AGRICULTURE:Producers face price fight COFFEE
EXPORTINGCOUNTRIES ARE HAVINGDIFFICULTY IN MAINTAININGTHEIR ECONOMIES
AND ADAPTINGTO ONGOINGDECLINE:," Financial Times (London, England), January 24, 2001:
42, accessed December 07,2016,
http://infoweb.newsbank.com/resources/doc/nb/news/113BBD85BA497688?p=WORLDNEWS.
15. Villanueva 15
production. In a matter of only seven years, Vietnam jumped from the thirteenth place in the
world in terms of coffee production, to becoming the second biggest world producer behind just
the coffee giant, Brazil. In doing so, Vietnam surpassed traditional coffee markets like Costa
Rica, Mexico and the Ivory Coast, Indonesia and Colombia. They owe this to the incredibly
cheap labor that Vietnam can get. In 2004, Vietnam exported 900,000 tonnes of coffee.25 This is
the sad story of a world economy that will throw sales at the entity which can produce for less.
The Vietnamese coffee miracle served as a determinant for the decreased production of many
countries including Costa Rica. Adding on to that, the stock retention law was not obeyed
because the International Coffee Organization had no way to enforce it. This meant that Vietnam
exported more than 80% limit they were supposed to sell. This is a problem because as it has
been discussed if there is more supply than demand, the price will always go down. to add to
this, Vietnam was selling coffee at incredibly cheap prices, “Vietnam is a state-run economy,
their coffee farmers are heavily subsidized, so no one knows for sure what their production cost
is. But it is estimated to be around US$200 per tonne…Compare this with production costs of
US$450 per tonne for Indonesia and US$550 for Thailand, and it is easy to see why Vietnamese
exporters are more than happy to sell at the current 'low' price of US$600 per tonne.” No one
knows how Vietnam keeps their cost of production so low but it certainly isn’t by being the most
humanitarian country in the world.26
25
KAZMIN,AMY. "COMMODITIES & AGRICULTURE:Vietnam caught in coffee grind: As prices
plunge, farmers in the central highlands are suffering. Amy Kazmin reports:," Financial Times (London,
England), March 01, 2002: 30, accessed December 07,2016,
http://infoweb.newsbank.com/resources/doc/nb/news/1148A6E6508877B8?p=WORLDNEWS..
26
Tay, Erica. "Vietnam's robust roast sends bean farmers jumping - Its low production costs have
helped it flood the market, causing a glut that has slashed coffee prices to US$600 a tonne," Straits Times,
16. Villanueva 16
The last reason for the decline in Costa Rican production of coffee was la roya or coffee
leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix). The coffee leaf rust is a fungus that was identified as early as 1869
and is a fungus endemic disease that spreads through coffee fields. The disease can be controlled
but it cannot be eliminated. This leaf rust has affected the crops and caused a shortage of coffee
exports.27
The (Singapore), October 08, 2004, accessed December 07,2016,
http://infoweb.newsbank.com/resources/doc/nb/news/105975C2A24CEE5B?p=WORLDNEWS.
27
Rice, Robert A. "A Place Unbecoming: The Coffee Farm of Northern Latin America."Geographical
Review 89, no. 4 (1999): 554-79. doi:10.2307/216102.
17. Villanueva 17
Annotated bibliography
International Coffee Council, World coffee trade (1963 – 2013): A review of the markets,
challenges and opportunities facing the sector (London, United Kingdom: International
Coffee Organization)
Palmer, Steven Paul., and Iván Molina Jiménez. The Costa Rica Reader: History, Culture,
Politics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004, 55-71.
Oscar E. Rojas, Zonificación agroecológica para el cultivo de café (Coffea arabica) en Costa
Rica (San José, Costa Rica: INSTITUTO INTERAMERICANO DE COOPERACIÓN
PARA LA AGRICULTURA, 1987) 3-13, 24-25.
Colburn, Forrest D. "Class, State, and Revolution in Rural Nicaragua: The Case of Los
Cafetaleros." The Journal of Developing Areas 18, no. 4 (1984): 501-18.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4191293.
SAMPER, Mario. "LOS PAISAJES SOCIALES DEL CAFÉ. REFLEXIONES
COMPARADAS." Caravelle (1988-), no. 61 (1993): 49-60.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40853409.
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