C ONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYSING RESULTS

2.4.1 Measuring yields – or measuring benefits?

Table 1: Coffee production area and yields, APROCAMP and ADROH producers

Table 1 displays an overview of ADROH and APROCAMP producers and the estimated harvest from their plots in 2006/7. 15 ADROH coffee producers responded, and the relation production area / yields differed between the

peasants. One farmer, for example, produced 22qq coffee cherries on 4 tareas of land (1/5,5), while others produced only 1qq on the same area (1/0,25). Also, APROCAMP farmers have higher yields than ADROH producers per tarea land.

Informant Had coffee from

The difference in yields between the producers can be partly described by differences in peasants’ plants and plots. Obviously agro-ecological conditions, such as height and soil fertility, are important. Productivity may also differ between plots due to coffee threes of different ages or varieties. Coffee grows on small threes which can yield for thirty years, although after ten-fifteen years the yields begin to decline (Martinez-Torres 2006). Some producers have plants that are barely reaching the age where they start to yield; some have plants at the age of optimal yields. Other plants are 20 years old, and start to yield less. Some peasants have a mix of plants of different age, since they planted them at different times.

Coffee production not only vary between plots, the same coffee fields yield differently from year to year: “This year the harvest was very low, I only harvested 7 quintals of coffee this time. At other times, I have cut ten, fifteen in the first harvest” ³ (ADROH respondent #5).Coffee is a cyclical crop, where the production varies from year to year: a year of high yields may be, as the coffee producer in the above statement has observed, followed by almost half of that production the next year (Gobbi 2000). The reasons for the variations in yields can be also explained by that some years the peasants do not have the means to fertilize thoroughly, or by climatic variations, such as rains or chills that may ruin the plant. .

In a study such as this it is difficult to measure benefits or drawbacks based on yields, and neither are yields, as we shall see in the case studies, always the most important factor behind a farmer’s decision. The analysis will therefore look at other factors that benefit or disadvantage the peasants, because

[..]peasants rarely base their decisions about what crops to plant or how to manage them solely on the basis of expected yields. They balance this information against many factors, including economic ones (the availability and costs of inputs and likely returns) and a range of broader human

ecological considerations. (Parrott et.al 2006:166).

3 “Este ano estuvo bien mala la cosecha, yo solo saque 7 quintales de café esta vez. Otros años he sacado diez,

Considering this, livelihood analysis was chosen as a framework for the analysis of the findings.

2.4.2 Livelihood analysis

The research has studied two development projects, but the aim is not to do a project evaluation of the kind that, with the words of Villarreal (1992: 265) “end up describing the objectives of the project, the intended plans of implementation, the activities carried out, the obstacles encountered and the results obtained”. The aim is rather to analyze the findings from the qualitative fieldwork in order to understand how and why the projects have influenced the lives of the different producers.

The conceptual framework for analysing the findings uses elements from livelihood analysis⁴, which takes into account factors that influences upon the possibilities that people have to make a living and on how they make their

decisions. The line of thought behind the choice of this framework is to take into account the producers´ use of and access to resources, and the impact the new farming techniques have had on modifying the constraining factors that the farmers relate to.

The concepts used for the analysis are inspired by the livelihood frameworks elaborated by other institutions and researchers such as the one elaborated by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) (1999), and the asset-based framework used by Jansen et.al (2005) when researching Honduran livelihood strategies (See appendix 2).

The basic idea of the livelihood approach is that people have access to certain resources, which make up their asset base. These are often divided into five resource groups, which are natural, physical, human, financial and social.

Natural resources in this analysis are understood as land, agro-ecological

conditions, soil fertility and crops. Physical resources refers to infrastructure and

livestock, human resources include labour, knowledge, training and education, financial resources are access to financial income through enumerated work, remittances and credits, and finally, social resources refer to the state of relations to other people and groups.

In addition to administering their resource base, people live within a context, which is made up of constraints, policies and institutions, which again influence on their access to resources. Within this context, while drawing on their resources, people turn to different activities - livelihood strategies - to make a living, in order to achieve certain desired outcomes, which are not merely to increase their incomes, but may also be savings, health, food security,

sustainability, self-esteem, empowerment and/or hopes for the future (Jansen et.al 2005) – and these desired outcomes can also be understood as motivations to act or to continue acting in a certain way. The following definition of

livelihood strategies encapsulates how livelihood is viewed in this study:

Livelihood strategies thus refer to the choices that people employ regarding the use of their asset portfolio, in pursuit of income, security, well-being and other productive and reproductive goals. These choices translate into economic activities such as land and labour use decisions, reproductive choices, investments in education, migration, participation in social capital building etc. Choices thus depend to an important extent on asset holdings which determine the ability to undertake a given enterprise and the

productivity of resources allocated to that enterprise, while the potential returns depend also on the context. (Jansen et.al 2005: 25)

The analysis is based on testimonies from the actors involved in the project – and looks at the obstacles they encountered in their attempts to initiate organic farming on their fields and sell the organic coffee through a Fair Trade cooperative - understanding, as written by Long (2001:13), that “[a]ll forms of external intervention necessarily enter the existing lifeworlds of the individuals

4 Livelihood analysis as an analytical tool for research and policy implementation has been bot critiziced, debated and

and social groups affected, and in this way they are mediated and transformed by these same actors and structures.”

In this sense this is an actor-oriented analysis, grounded on the

understanding that “society is composed of actors, thinking agents, capable of strategizing and finding pace for manoeuvre in the situations they face and manipulating resources and constraints.” (Villarreal 1999:248). The people, the individuals - or the social actors - have different access to resources and to some extent face dissimilar constraints. Although sometimes APROCAMP or ADROH producers are referred to as units, the analysis also acknowledges that within the groups, different actors have different assets and diverging practices.

2.4.3 Outline of the thesis

The following chapters will display the analytical findings of the qualitative research. First, the contextual factors are presented in chapter three, outlining the principal constraints, livelihood activities and the influencing institutions and policies (concerning production and especially trade of organic and conventional coffee) that the producers in this study relate to.

In chapter four the case study of the ADROH peasants experiences with organic coffee is analysed, taking into account how their access to resources have modified their practices and the adaptation of organic techniques, how the new farm techniques have altered their asset base, and how organic farming has made them increasingly resilient or weak when facing the constraining factors

(especially related to climate and land tenure), and how it has modified their livelihood actions. Taken into account these factors the study shows that the ADROH peasants decisions not to continue with the sale of organic coffee was made due to their resources, constraints and motivations.

In chapter five the APROCAMP experience will be analyzed using the same methodological concepts, and the impact of social capital for the two dissimilar experiences of sale of organic Fair Trade coffee will be discussed.

The aims of the analysis are to illustrate the differences between the projects, identify the benefits and challenges organic farming has meant for the

farmers, analyse the impact the project has had on the coffee producers’

livelihoods, and point out some of the factors that may have influenced on the outcome of the project. In light of the findings, the concluding chapter will discuss whether organic coffee farming is sustainable and contributes to the improvement of resource poor farmers’ livelihoods, and to what extent Fair Trade is a tool for smallholder farmers to escape poverty.