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

I had visited Matagalpa in 2000, when I made an overnight trip to a working
coffee plantation and ecolodge located nearby. On this, my initial trip to the highlands
coffee region, I learned of the difference between high-altitude, shade and low-altitude,
full-sun coffee production. This was my first view of the highland conditions that favor
the quality coffee for which Nicaragua is renowned.
During this visit, I met with Matt Wooten, a former Peace Corps volunteer and a
friend from college who was working as an evaluator for CLUSA-Nicaragua on a long-
term development project. He told me of CLUSA-Nicaragua’s project to organize small-
scale coffee communities into associations that were eligible for organic certification. He
traveled to remote reaches of the highlands to hold workshops and provide training on
conversion to organic production techniques. The idea was to liberate farmers from
dependency on petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers, such as urea, and become self-
sufficient and sustainable through organic farming. Farmers could sell at a higher price
and access better credit from organic certification.
Matt explained that USAID funded CLUSA’s project with approximately seven
million dollars over six years. That seemed like an impressive commitment to make to
small farmers who had been embroiled in the Contra War only a decade prior. The fact
that the U.S. was investing in community-level economic development puzzled me. I
returned to my graduate program in New Mexico to research the roots of agrarian
development in the post-WWII era and began an inquiry into what organic coffee
farming could offer to remote rural communities of Nicaragua.
The following spring (2001), I received a Tinker Foundation travel grant to
conduct preliminary research by accompanying CLUSA development agents on their
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