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

capacity of their fellow farmers. They must also trust their administration to operate in
their best interest. However, the certification and inspection process for organic
production is based on the assumption that farmers will manipulate the system if not kept
to a standard of honesty through regular visits and inspections. The attitude that farmers’
operations need to be inspected regularly also assumes that farmers might not care for
their soil, forests, and rivers if they are not trained to do so by First World development
agents. This dynamic plays on two pervasive stereotypes in and about Nicaragua. The
first is an elitist attitude that campesinos cannot behave in an ecologically-minded fashion
to protect their own resources, while, by contrast, Europeans and North Americans care
more about the rainforests than the actual rainforest inhabitants do. The second stereotype
is an assumption that farmers in developing countries cannot be trusted to maintain
organic production without the supervision of an international certifying agency. In fact,
rural, small-scale farmers have the most intimate understanding of what will realistically
work to improve ecological conditions of their lands. However, their perspectives are not
incorporated in community or regional plans that are supposed to address environmental
or social ills. Without consideration for farmers’ contributions, recent innovations to
production, organizing, and trade practices will not overcome the legacy of distrust that
pervades this region. In many ways such innvoations instead perpetuate pervasive distrust
rather than get past it.
In closing, when I began this research I hoped that organic coffee farming could
be a solution for the problems that have existed in this region for centuries. I discovered,
much as developers have found, that this hope is too simplistic. The shift to organic
production can benefit many farmers and offer methods to improve productivity and
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