Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Are Geological Indications a way to "decommodify" the coffee market?

Contents:

Author Info

  • Galtier, F.
  • Belletti, Giovanni
  • Marescotti, Andrea

Abstract

The commodity nature of green coffee is the main cause of “the coffee paradox” (decreasing prices at production level and rising prices at consumption level). So, a requirement to reach a less unfair distribution of the added value between the supply chain would be to “decommodify” the coffee market not only at the final consumer level, but also at the production level. Certifications (like Fair Trade, Organic, Rainforest Alliance, Utz Kapeh, or Birdfriend) are often presented as a way to reach this result, but according to some authors these schemes seem to be rather an extension of the standardization wave to new quality attributes (linked to social and/or environmental characteristics of the production process). Geographical indications (GIs) seems to be very different in this respect. GIs’ Codes of practices (which include the delimitation of the production area and a description of the production norms and product quality) are normally elaborated by the local actors themselves , who are able to define the link to the terroir (physical and anthropic characteristics of the production area ). The aim of this article is to question the ability of GIs to “decommodify” the coffee market also on the production side, and contribute to a fair distribution of the benefits of decommodification. The paper is based on the analysis of the design process of a GI coffee in the Jarabacoa region (Dominican Republic), which led to a very selective Code of practices but not so specific with regard to the link with the territory. The article evidences the chain of causality that brought to such a result, and debates to what extent the case can be considered as context-specific. Given that it appeared that most of the determinants are generic to the coffee world, the relevance of GIs as a tool to “decommodify” the coffee market must be qualified.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://purl.umn.edu/43834
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by European Association of Agricultural Economists in its series 2008 International Congress, August 26-29, 2008, Ghent, Belgium with number 43834.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: 2008
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ags:eaae08:43834

Contact details of provider:
Email:
Web page: http://www.eaae.org
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: Coffee; Geographical Indications; Collective action; Marketing;

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Teuber, Ramona, 2007. "Geographical Indications of Origin as a Tool of Product Differentiation: The Case of Coffee," 105th Seminar, March 8-10, 2007, Bologna, Italy 7866, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Oberthür, Thomas & Läderach, Peter & Posada, Huver & Fisher, Myles J. & Samper, Luis F. & Illera, Julia & Collet, Laure & Moreno, Edgar & Alarcón, Rodrigo & Villegas, Andres & Usma, Herman & Perez,, 2011. "Regional relationships between inherent coffee quality and growing environment for denomination of origin labels in Nariño and Cauca, Colombia," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 783-794.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:eaae08:43834

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (AgEcon Search).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.