Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Honors Thesis (Open Access)

Department

Colby College. Global Studies Program

Advisor(s)

Patrice M. Franko

Second Advisor

Britt Halvorson

Abstract

This thesis examines how different organizational models in Costa Rica's coffee sector shape producers’ ability to capture value, build resilience, and sustain rural livelihoods in a rapidly changing global market. In comparing traditional cooperatives and new micro-mills, I examine specifically how control over the value chain, access to markets, and social infrastructure differ across models and what these differences mean for the farmers who depend on them. This project analyzes how the collapse of international price agreements and decades of market volatility drove producers toward new strategies, from independent processing and direct trade to coffee tourism. Costa Rica stands as a unique exception to coffee’s historic global imbalances, having developed a coffee sector characterized by democratic institutions, state regulation, and a cooperative movement that gave smallholders collective power. Yet the price crisis of 2000 and the 50% decline in national production over the last 25 years have exposed the limits of this model. Through interviews with cooperative members, private farmers, cooperative managers, tour guides, and officials at ICAFE, I document what this period of transition looks like on individual farms across Monteverde and the Central Valley. The choices producers are making, whether to stay in a cooperative, go independent, or navigate some careful combination of both, represent complex decisions made within a broader landscape of pressures, including climate change, urbanization, and labor shortages. This project focuses specifically on the organizational and touristic dimensions of that adaptation, culminating in my concluding argument that the sector's future lies not in a sudden revolution and rejection of traditional cooperative structure but rather a gradual, layered transition toward greater producer autonomy.

Keywords

Coffee, Cooperatives, Micro-mills, Tourism, Resilience, Costa Rica

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