Third Wave Coffees and Maya Farmers in Guatemala

$500 a pound coffee? Yes, the very best coffees these days are selling for astronomical prices. The $500/lb lot (from El Injerto in Guatemala) was a record, but the Wall Street Journal recently reported on the rising auction prices for so-called Third Wave coffees:

Commodity coffee prices are set by the New York C Price (which, today, is around $187 per hundredweight). But market demand is increasing for the highest quality coffees, those scoring in the upper 80s and above 90 on a 100 point cupping chart. And prices for these beans are rising fast.

Yet, The Guardian says of these new craft brews: "it's pricey, but farmers aren't getting rich." Guatemala is ground zero for the Third Wave coffee boom, and while it is true that farmers aren't getting rich, research Bart Victor and I are conducting shows that these mostly Maya small holding farmers have benefited from the market boom--and have high hopes for coffee. In my new book The Good Life, I look at the lives of these coffee farmers

Still the market is imperfect, and small farmers growing quality coffee often have a hard time selling it as such (rather than to middlemen, who mix it with undifferentiated lots). As The Guardian article reports, "those hoping to change these industries are betting on a mix of direct relationships between farmers and manufacturers, and new business models that help to distance specialty products from commodity prices."

Brazil's Middle Class and the Price of Coffee in New York

It looks like Brazil will surpass the U.S. this year as the world's biggest consumer of coffee. The Wall Street Journal reports that this is driving up global prices. Coffee futures (the "C price" as it is known in the trade) reached $1.95 a pound last Thursday, its highest since the price collapse in 2011. This is good news for the smallholding Maya farmers in Guatemala who produce high-altitude, high-quality coffees. (I have previously discussed high-end coffee and Maya farmers and the research carried out with Bart Victor.) 

It also reflects a change in global political and economic relations (as discussed here in more detail)--the rise of Brazil as a foreign aid donor, middle class consumer, and politically self-confident country.No longer just a supplier of the raw materials we need for our consumer goods, but a competitor driving up prices of consumer goods (coffee as well as Miami real estate), an emerging world power whose positions we need to engage and not assume we can dictate.

Cash on the Table: Markets, Values, and Moral Economies

Moral values inform our economic behaviors. On its face, this is an unassailable proposition. Think of the often spiritual appeal of consumer goods or the value-laden stakes of upward or downward mobility. Consider the central role that moral questions regarding poverty, access to health care, the tax code, property and land rights, and corruption play in the shaping of modern governments, societies, and social movements. Ponder the meaning of fair trade coffee and organic produce as well as Walmart’s everyday low prices. The moral aspects of the marketplace have never been so contentious or consequential; however, the realm of economics is often treated as a world unto itself, a domain where human behavior is guided not by emotions, beliefs, moralities, or the passions that fascinate anthropologists but by the hard fact of rational choices.

A great deal is at stake in understanding the moral dimensions of economic behavior and markets. In this volume, we bring together anthropologists, economists, and management scholars to look at the moral implications of markets.  Anthropologists tend to focus on the corrosive effects of markets on traditional lifeways and the ways in which global markets disadvantage marginalized peoples. Economists often have difficulty recognizing that markets are embedded in particular social and political power structures and that “free” market transactions are often less free than we might think. If anthropologists could view markets a bit more ecumenically and if economists could view them a bit more politically, then great value—cash on the table—can be found in bringing these perspectives together.