Individual social and economic position versus impact of collective services: Contribution to small-scale farmers’ adoption on single origin coffee processing scheme

Abstract

The protection of coffee products by labels named geographic indications (GI) is often presented as one option to protect the markets open to small scale farmers and sustain their production. However, farmers only enjoy a limited direct benefit from GI certification, instead coffee’s economic rent is still captured largely by exporters. The research attempted to overcome these limitations by creating more focused labels through single origin (SO) specialty coffee. Methods performed included indepth interviews with coffee professionals aimed to assess different public policies resulting more efficiency of SO coffee on the farms’ economies added by analysis hierarchy process (AHP) and questioner given to 134 farmers to find the factors contributing on their adoption. It was found the collective action through farmers groups allowed farmers to set up the attributes of coffee production, including some regulations and sanctions. These services went far beyond the individual position to adopt the SO specifications. In the final decision, farmers have been adopted the SO program due to reliable factors to enhance the SO collective action development, such as (1) farmer institutional improvement (0.425), (2) farmer technical skill improvement (0.332), (3) financial access (0.102), (4) technology support (0.087), (5) marketing and partnership development (0.054).

Keywords

• geographical indication
• coffee
• innovation in agriculture
• collective action
• farmers’ adoption