Coping with Crisis: Costa Rican Households and the International Coffee Market

Abstract

To support themselves through coffee production, family farmers must take intricate and informed decisions often based on factors beyond their control. The booms and busts of the world coffee market are not new to Costa Rican coffee farmers, but with the failure in 1989 of the International Coffee Organization (ICO) to reach a new agreement, coffee-producing households must again cope with low coffee prices. In Perez Zeledon farming families must also contend with an expanding population, scarcity of land, and difficulties in marketing alternative crops. To survive, they have combined coffee production with wage labor, household micoenterprises, temporary migration, and higher education. Rather than foreshadowing the demise of the family farm, such flexibility can allow small farmers to persist. But to do so they require the continued support of the State