Lessons from Oaxaca:
Realities of Organic Coffee Production

by Jennifer Foss

      Santa Cruz Tepetotutla is a small community within the Chinantla region of Oaxaca, Mexico. Due to its extreme isolation, little is known about the lives of the people or their agricultural practices. As part of an on-going project, this ethnographic information was collected both via a formal interview and informal conversations. The results were wholly unexpected, with data suggesting that the growers are not only not receiving their promised profit increase, but that the local organic program was not even ensuring that they were following all organic protocols. This, in turn, has lead many growers to not only contemplate abandoning the organic program, but to leave their homes in search of work in the state capital or the US, only exacerbating issues of low standards of living in the area. Thus, this study seeks to expose these issues, as well as to make suggestions on how they may be rectified in order to both improve the lives of workers and to maintain the Cloud Forest in which they farm.

This project has been made possible by a funding support under the USDA CSREES HSI Higher Education Grant Program. USDA-CSREES Grant Number 2005-36422-15940.