i Patrick W. Staib Anthropology This dissertation is approved, and it ...

from the training in production techniques and organizational support they receive in
order to remain productive and viable in the very fickle coffee market.
Santos González Ponce and Adrian González are two small-scale Las Grietas
coffee farmers with whom I worked closely. They farm on less than five manzanas each,
Santos on 4.5 and Adrian on 3.5. They belong to the Las Grietas group of the Procaoc
base-level cooperative that is a member of the UCA export and service co-op. Both
Santos and Adrian are extremely hardworking, yet they have few expendable funds to
reinvest in their farms or in additional labor. They both have only small children, and
therefore they pay neighbors to help on their farms.
Small-scale producers seem to me to be the hardest-working sector in the coffee
industry. They must manage finances, budgets, and farm planning while devoting a major
part of their time to the day-to-day tasks on the farm. As I witnessed firsthand, the small-
scale farmers do not have the time or the flexibility that larger-scale farmers have to
participate in decision-making and other important activities with their co-ops. In many
cases, smaller farmers do not organize because of all the extraneous obligations that
membership in a cooperative entails. In essence, small farmers benefit the least and work
the hardest in the cooperative arrangement, a parallel to capitalist systems worldwide.
For example, Yolanda Reyes is a small-scale coffee farmer who works
independently and lives and farms in Las Grietas. She has a modest adobe house along
the main road in Las Grietas. Her five-manzana farm is along the east side of the valley.
She is originally from Condega and moved to San Juan 19 years ago with her parents.
She studied up to sixth grade and purchased her farmland with money her parents gave
her. She is a single mother with two children, ages 13 and 3.
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