From Differentiated Coffee Markets Towards Alternative Trade and Knowledge Networks

This chapter presents a case study focusing on the Community Agroecology Network (CAN), an organization started by the United States and Mesoamerica’s activists, whose effort is to create an alternative trade and knowledge network. The basic aim behind CAN is to benefit conservation and social development efforts by linking producers, consumers, and producer organizations. CAN is a response to the problems arising out of the dominance of certification processes in Fair Trade and organic coffee networks, and the chapter discusses the organization’s main goals of intercommunity relationship development, direct coffee marketing, and ecological sustainability. It moots a comparison between alternative agro-food networks and CAN on the grounds of biodiversity conservation, empowerment, and enhanced livelihoods

Agroecology and Participatory Action Research for Food and Water Justice in Central America

I remember driving with local community leaders into northern Nicaragua’s mountains to meet with organized farmers as we continued a long-term relationship that sought to explain and construct strategic responses to drought and an El Niño event in 2016. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network warned that this area, and much of Central America, was experiencing a stage three food crisis characterized by severe food insecurity coping responses, such as skipping meals and selling assets. Yet here we found farmers that had organized themselves into a cooperative and invested not only in organic coffee for export, but also in corn and beans for their own consumption and local markets. Although some of these farmers still reported several months of low-level food insecurity, conditions were buffered by their diversified farming practices and a community-based seed and grain bank. The recently upgraded village water system provided access to drinking water from mountain streams. In times of hunger and thirst, the farmers told us how they recently packed up their mules with several thousand pounds of corn and brought them to a neighboring community where they knew others were suffering more. They remembered how these neighbors once sheltered and fed them when they fled their land after it was attacked during the wars of the 1980s. The practical hope in diversified farming and solidarity are matched by global challenges to secure rights to food and water

Quality revolutions, solidarity networks, and sustainability innovations: following Fair Trade coffee from Nicaragua to California

Nicaraguan smallholder cooperative leaders working in partnership with a California-based small-scale roasting company pioneered an alternative approach to confronting the post-1999 coffee crisis. They built coffee tasting laboratories and integrated grassroots organizing efforts to create a national smallholder cooperative association that dramatically improved the quality, consistency, and prices from of the coffee they exported. Cooperative leaders used this development project to gain a more significant share of political economic power in a domestic coffee industry historically dominated by colonial powers, and corporate and domestic elites. This alliance between the artisanal small-scale roasting companies and cooperative leaders also proved that smallholders selling into fair trade markets could consistently produce and export high quality coffee. This case study unfolds into Nicaragua\u27s northern mountains, northern California\u27s coastal cities and the commodity trade and solidarity networks that connect them. Beyond following the coffee bean from mountainside farmers, through artisan specialty coffee roasters, and into the hands of Bay Area coffee drinkers, the article recovers the history of political and technological revolutions and the transnational solidarity networks that contributed to sustainability innovations within the coffee value chain. Although the tangible benefits of fair trade coffee to farmers and landscapes have not lived up to the lofty proclamations of its advocates, farmers generally receive higher prices for their coffee and are frequently more secure in their land titles. This political ecology of coffee and solidarity suggests theoretical questions about the role of classic revolutions, and Polanyian double movements in the efforts to practice the alternative values and principles that motivate many of today\u27s sustainability innovations

Cultivating Sustainable Coffee: Persistent Paradoxes

This chapter discusses the relationship and interconnections among changing the livelihoods of farmers, initiatives for sustainable coffee, and the production of shade-grown coffee. It examines the advantages and opportunities for farmers and producers engaged in coffee certification and diversification programs. The role of Fair Trade and organic networks in creating awareness of biodiversity conservation, the social and environment costs of coffee systems, and the need for supporting small farmers are also discussed. The methods to increase accountability and improve the efficiency of coffee cooperatives are presented in this chapter, as are the importance of understanding the sustainability initiatives and their implications for the regulators, along with the use of land patterns for coffee cultivation

Post-conflict reconciliation and development in Nicaragua: The role of cooperatives and collective action

This paper examines how cooperatives affected and were affected by the profound political, economic and social transitions that have occurred in Nicaragua in recent decades. It pays particular attention to the shift from the post-revolutionary Sandinista regime of the 1980s to the "neoliberal" regime of the 1990s and early 2000s. In the early 1990s, a peace accord ended years of civil war and the Sandinista government was voted out of office by a coalition of Centrist and Right-wing parties. This meant that policies supporting state and cooperative forms of production were replaced by those favouring privatization, the rolling back of the state and the freeing up of market forces. Cooperatives and the agrarian reform process initiated by the Sandinista government were heavily impacted by this process, often in contradictory ways. Land redistribution to landless peasant farmers and cooperative organizations continued as part of the process of peace-building prior to the elections. Demobilized military and other security personnel were given land after the elections. Workers in state-owned farms and agro-industrial enterprises also acquired assets when part of the state sector was converted to worker-owned and managed enterprises. But the neoliberal era ushered in a process of decollectivization and dispossession and heavily constrained access to credit and support services for cooperatives and small-scale farmers. Agricultural workers and producers were not passive bystanders in this process. Their responses conformed to a Polanyian-type "double movement" where societal forces mobilize in myriad ways to protect against the negative social effects of economic liberalization and the dominance of market forces. The pro-market strand of the double movement centred not only on economic liberalization but also an agrarian counter-reform centred on decollectivization and returning lands to former owners. The societal reaction or "protective" strand of the double movement consisted of diverse forms of contestation, collective action and social innovation. Divided in three parts, this paper first outlines the rapid rise of the cooperative sector and its strengths and weaknesses during the post-revolutionary period from 1979 to the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in 1990. Part 2 examines the uneven trajectory of agrarian reform and cooperative development during the neoliberal 1990s, consisting of counter reform and ongoing redistribution to the landless. Part 3 examines four manifestations of the "double movement" by agricultural workers and producers. They include (i) the proliferation of civil and armed resistance in the early 1990s; (ii) the structuring of a cooperative movement; (iii) efforts to empower small coffee producers via the fair trade movement and the "quality revolution" and (iv) the drive to reactivate the smallholdings of poor rural women and organize them in pre-cooperative groups. A concluding section distils the main findings for the addressing the challenge of post-conflict reconciliation and development, and refers briefly to the implications for the cooperative movement of the return to power of the Sandinista National Liberation Front in 2007. The main policy lesson for governments engaged in processes of peace-building and "post-conflict" reconstruction would seem to be: ignore the issue of inclusive agrarian development at your peril! If a disabling policy environment exists, and if demands for land and employment on the part of subaltern groups are not met, various forms of resistance will ensue, with the possibility of renewed violent conflict and the inability to govern effectively. And when a political party seemingly supportive of the cooperative sector regains the reins of power, renewed support may come at the cost of dependency and loss of autonomy of the cooperative movement

CONSUMER, WHOLESALER AND RETAILER PERCEPTIONS ABOUT SELECTED MARKETING ISSUES CONCERNING FRESH FISH AND SEAFOOD PRODUCTS

Consumer/Household Economics, Marketing,

The reduced cost of providing a nationally recognised service for familial hypercholesterolaemia

OBJECTIVE: Familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) affects 1 in 500 people in the UK population and is associated with premature morbidity and mortality from coronary heart disease. In 2008, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommended genetic testing of potential FH index cases and cascade testing of their relatives. Commissioners have been slow to respond although there is strong evidence of cost and clinical effectiveness. Our study quantifies the recent reduced cost of providing a FH service using generic atorvastatin and compares NICE costing estimates with three suggested alternative models of care (a specialist-led service, a dual model service where general practitioners (GPs) can access specialist advice, and a GP-led service).METHODS: Revision of existing 3?year costing template provided by NICE for FH services, and prediction of costs for running a programme over 10?years. Costs were modelled for the first population-based FH service in England which covers Southampton, Hampshire, Isle of Wight and Portsmouth (SHIP). Population 1.95 million.RESULTS: With expiry of the Lipitor (Pfizer atorvastatin) patent the cost of providing a 10-year FH service in SHIP reduces by 42.5% (£4.88 million on patent vs £2.80 million off patent). Further cost reductions are possible as a result of the reduced cost of DNA testing, more management in general practice, and lower referral rates to specialists. For instance a dual-care model with GP management of patients supported by specialist advice when required, costs £1.89 million.CONCLUSIONS: The three alternative models of care are now <50% of the cost of the original estimates undertaken by NICE

Food security and smallholder coffee production: current issues and future directions

In recent years, there has been growing discussion within the specialty coffee industry about the preva- lence of seasonal food insecurity in coffee growing communities. The idea that coffee producers lack re- sources to feed themselves and their families flies in the face of Fair Trade and other sustainable coffee ini- tiatives, which were designed to ensure a viable livelihood and improved conditions for small-scale coffee farmers around the world. Though these certifications represent an important step toward delivering better prices to farmers, they are inadequate tools to stand alone against the formidable and entrenched barriers faced by this population. Small-scale farmers are esti- mated to produce 70% of the world\u27s coffee supply (Eakin et al, 2009), within an industry supported by up to 25 million coffee producers. If you also include coffee harvesters, processors, and industry workers, the total is closer to 100 million people whose livelihoods depend on the crop in some way (Jha et al, 2011)

Xeno Amino Acids: A look into biochemistry as we don't know it

Would another origin of life resemble Earth's biochemical use of amino acids? Here we review current knowledge at three levels: 1) Could other classes of chemical structure serve as building blocks for biopolymer structure and catalysis? Amino acids now seem both readily available to, and a plausible chemical attractor for, life as we don't know it. Amino acids thus remain important and tractable targets for astrobiological research. 2) If amino acids are used, would we expect the same L-alpha-structural subclass used by life? Despite numerous ideas, it is not clear why life favors L-enantiomers. It seems clearer, however, why life on Earth uses the shortest possible (alpha-) amino acid backbone, and why each carries only one side chain. However, assertions that other backbones are physicochemically impossible have relaxed into arguments that they are disadvantageous. 3) Would we expect a similar set of side chains to those within the genetic code? Not only do many plausible alternatives exist and evidence exists for both evolutionary advantage and physicochemical constraint for those encoded by life. Overall, as focus shifts from amino acids as a chemical class to specific side chains used by post-LUCA biology, the probable role of physicochemical constraint diminishes relative to that of biological evolution. Exciting opportunities now present themselves for laboratory work and computing to explore how changing the amino acid alphabet alters the universe of protein folds. Near-term milestones include: a) expanding evidence about amino acids as attractors within chemical evolution; b) extending characterization of other backbones relative to biological proteins; c) merging computing and laboratory explorations of structures and functions unlocked by xeno peptides.Comment: Submitted to Life (ISSN 2075-1729), 26 pages (without references), 8 figures, 1 table, 1 bo

Toward a feminist political ecology of household food and water security during drought in northern Nicaragua

Few studies assess the relationship between food and water access, despite global concerns about people’s inability to maintain access to both food and water. We conducted a mixed-methods comparative case study in northern Nicaragua, with smallholders from two neighboring communities that differed in water availability and institutional strength, using a feminist political ecology framework and food and water security definitions that focus on access, availability, use, and stability. We adopted a participatory approach that included: a sex-disaggregated survey in 2016; interviews, participant observation, and community-based water quality testing from 2014 to 2019; and analysis of a severe drought that occurred from 2014 to 2017. Our results suggest that uneven power relations, biophysical conditions, gender, and institutions shape food and water access, and indicate that households across both communities average 2 months of drinking water insecurity during the dry season followed by an average of 2.5 months of food insecurity early in the growing season. The average duration of lean food months was similar across communities and sex, but water insecurity lasted longer in the community that had weaker local institutions and less surface water availability. Ethnographic research helped to document uneven and gendered experiences of water access and to illustrate how they were also shaped by conflicts over water for irrigation vs. domestic uses and cross-scalar limitations in water and land governance. Although we found that gender and institutions were not strong predictors of several food and water insecurity indicators on their own, both factors influenced the terms of access, conflict, and cooperative governance needed to secure resources and well-being. Our study highlights the need for theory, methods, and field research that integrate the analysis of food and water security, and it contributes to developing a feminist political ecology approach that unifies this analysis with a focus on gender