Coffee, cooperatives, and choba-choba: the role of non-market labor networks in building equitable supply chains
Agrarian marketing cooperatives are potentially important tools for rural development. However, many cooperatives experience significant outside sales to private intermediaries, even when offering price premiums through fair trade or organic certification programs. Outside sales weaken cooperatives...
| Autor: | |
|---|---|
| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2015 |
| País: | Ecuador |
| Institución: | Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales |
| Repositorio: | Revista EUTOPIA |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:revistas.flacsoandes.edu.ec:article/1658 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://revistas.flacsoandes.edu.ec/eutopia/article/view/1658 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | América Latina Perú café comercio justo cooperativas desarrollo económico rural mano de obra agrícola. Latin America Peru fair trade coffee cooperatives farm labor rural development. |
| Sumario: | Agrarian marketing cooperatives are potentially important tools for rural development. However, many cooperatives experience significant outside sales to private intermediaries, even when offering price premiums through fair trade or organic certification programs. Outside sales weaken cooperatives by increasing supply uncertainty and making advance contracting more risky. This paper studies the problem of outside sales in a single coffee cooperative in northern Peru. Empirical results from an instrumental variables (IV) probit model suggest that coffee cooperative members’ farm labor practices exert significant influence on their level of outside sales. Coffee growers that use more intensively cooperative labor networks known as choba-choba, as well as family household labor, engage in fewer outside sales and more sales through the cooperative as a proportion of their total harvest. These results suggest a linkage between the strength of coffee growing families and communities, and the robustness of agrarian marketing cooperatives. |
|---|