The political ecology of shaded coffee plantations in southern Mexico: conservation narratives and the everyday-lived-experience of farmworkers

• In Event: Working conditions in Mexico

Abstract

Biodiversity conservation in coffee agroecosystems can contribute to social sustainability by improving people’s livelihoods, food security, and reducing economic vulnerabilities in peasant households. This is particularly the case in smallholdings, were families are self-sustainably equipped with their means of production and use their own labor power to cultivate their land, diversify beyond coffee, and organize in cooperatives to get better prices. However, it is less clear whether conservation practices positively impact seasonal workers in labor-intensive systems. Farmworkers are one of the most vulnerable and marginalized actors within the coffee production chain facing food and labor inequalities. Through ethnographic research, I examine the tensions that arise when conservation practices and narratives meet the everyday-lived-experience of migrant farmworkers in an organic shade-grown coffee plantation in the southern Mexican border. I draw attention to the ways in which conservation narratives adopted in organic shade-grown coffee plantations have material and symbolic effects on farmworkers everyday-lived-experience, and argue that they contribute to farmworkers’ vulnerability and marginalization. At the same time, I recognize farmworkers as individuals with agency, and discuss the role of their peasant identity in the process of subtle resistance to unfair working conditions. The relevance of this work lies on exposing the social intricacies of coffee production and biodiversity conservation within labor-intensive systems, and questioning shade-grown organic coffee as a fair and just imaginary, as we transition to more sustainable food systems.

Author

• Esteli Jimenez-Soto