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

from overarching dependencies and costly chemical inputs, but the structural and
systematic issues need to be addressed before coffee farming can be sustainable in this
context.
Let us in conclusion review those structural and systematic issues. Coffee
production requires a large, seasonal labor force. This is ideally suited for poor tropical
countries with large unemployment rates. Nonetheless, the cost of labor is prohibitive for
small farmers in comparison with their larger-scale counterparts. Larger and more
affluent farmers stand to benefit more from involvement in co-ops than small-scale,
impoverished farmers do. However, larger farmers who market to specialty venues
(organic and Fair Trade) are required to collaborate with smaller-scale producers and
aggregate their harvests in order to meet export quotas and requirements. The smaller the
farmer, the more difficult it is for them to invest in increased yields and improved
plantation health. They cannot afford to compete with farmers of a larger scale. So, the
larger farmers must “accept the good with the bad” in the case of specialty marketing.
Danilo stated (in Chapter 8) that “es tiempo de dejar de chinear a los pequeños (it is time
to stop piggybacking the small [farmers]),” but he is the one who organized the small
farmers of Las Grietas to share efforts and make sacrifices to obtain organic certification
and sell to the value-added markets that purchase organic coffee.
Fulfilling the demand for certified organic, Fair Trade coffee requires cooperation
and mutual interdependence from Segovians of diverse resources and incomes. This often
leads to a shared frustration among these diverse groups. (Chapters 7 and 8). Neither the
small farmers of El Naranjo or Guanacastillo, nor even Danilo, can supply a completely
filled container of coffee on their own. An imbalance in the nature of participation in the
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