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

natural resources, to conserve, protect, and respect them, translates into the relationship
farmers have with their laborers, at least in the case of Las Grietas.
As discussed in Chapter Two, government owned coffee plantations were
privatized after the electoral loss of the Sandininstas. The Areas Propiedades del Pueblo,
or APPs, were sold and title to the Cooperativas Agropecuarias Sandinistas, or CAS,
went to the co-op members, who, in many cases, elected to divide their shares and sell
their own individual land parcels. In most of the Nicaraguan coffee sector, once state-
owned farmers were privatized and affluent farmers could purchase foreclosed farms and
expand productive potential. Meanwhile, smaller or less affluent farmers struggle to
endure price lows of and natural disasters of the late 1990s. As will be show in the next
two chapters, medium and small farmers, like Danilo and his brother Adrian, benefitted
from combining their efforts. They needed to organize to gain access to high value and
specialty export markets. In the following chapters, I explain how farmers across class
lines struggle to cooperate on issues of maintaining estimated yields, premium quality,
and secure credit through certifying as organic and participating in democratically-
elected, farmer-owned co-ops.
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