Coffee Expansion Research Articles

The income distribution effects of the Kenyan coffee marketing system

In order to meet its obligations to the International Coffee Agreement, Kenya regulated output from 1964–1972 and 1981–1985 by banning the planting of new coffee trees. With the use of a large dynamic computable general equilibrium model, we attempt to show that Kenya suffered significant income losses due to the inefficiency of its internal quota system. More importantly, as coffee has been the most lucrative crop in Kenya over the last 30 years, the restriction of coffee expansion resulted in very large distributional effects. The use of a coffee tax coupled with an increased expansion of coffee hectarage in the quota years would likely have significantly reduced the incidence of poverty in Kenya by redistributing income towards farmers in coffee zones who historically did not grow coffee, farmers in non-coffee zones, and landless rural labourers.

On Comparative History: A Reply to Tom Brass

In his comment on my article ‘Coffee and Rural Proletarianization in Puerto Rico, 1840–1898’ (Journal of Latin American Studies, XV, no. 1, May 1983, pp. 83–100), Tom Brass is to be lauded for the comparative observations used to contest my conclusions on proletarianization in the coffee-producing regions of 19th-century Puerto Rico. By examining some of the literature on coffee expansion in Brazill and Colombia, and comparing these cases with Puerto Rico, Dr Brass concludes that the development of capitalist agriculture, when accompanied by labour scarcity, results in ‘unfree labour’ rather than the development of free wage labour as I have indicated to be the case for Puerto Rico' coffee sector.

Coffee in Colombia 1850-1970: An Economic, Social and Political History.

List of tables List of figures List of maps Preface Acknowledgements 1. The Colombian export economy in the second half of the nineteenth century 2. The making of an oligarchy 3. Land and society in central Colombia in the second half of the nineteenth century 4. The internal structure of the coffee haciendas, 1870-1930 5. Living conditions and internal contradictions in the hacienda structure 6. Inflation, devaluation, and export taxes, 1870-1904 7. Crisis and transition towards the second cycle of expansion, 1903-10 8. Private appropriation of public lands in the west 9. Sociopolitical elements of antiogueno colonization 10. Coffee expansion and the strengthening of the Liberal model of development, 1910-50 11. The international cycle and coffee policies confronting the peasant, 1930-70 Appendices Weights and measures Glossary Notes Bibliography Index.

An Economic History of Colombia, 1845-1930.

1. Introduction Part I. The Economic Setting: 2. Bourbon and republican policies, 1763-1845 3. Continuities in agrarian social policy, 1760-1845 Part II. The Liberal Period: 4. The politics and economics of colonial reform, 1845-85 5. Trade expansion under the Liberal reforms, 1845-85 6. Liberalism and agrarian change, 1845-90 7. The anatomy of economic decline in nineteenth-century Colombia Part III. The Expansion of Coffee: 8. Antioqueno colonisation and the expansion of coffee 9. Agriculture, exports and economic development: a Colombian counterpoint 10. The development of transportation 11. A theory of the transition.