Responding to Globalization: Impacts of Certification on Colombian Small-Scale Coffee Growers

By X. Rueda, Eric F. Lambin. 2013

224 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Eco-certification of food and other agricultural products has been promoted as a way of making markets work for sustainability. Certification programs offer a price premium to producers who invest in more sustainable practices. The literature on the impacts of certification has focused primarily on the economic benefits farmers perceive from participating in these schemes. These benefits, however, are often subject to price variability, offering only a partial explanation of why farmers join and stay in certification programs. We evaluated the potential of the Rainforest Alliance certification program to foster more resilient social-ecological systems in the face of globalization. Using the case of Santander, Colombia, and a pair-based comparison of 86 households to effectively produce a robust counterfactual, we showed that certification provides important environmental benefits, while improving the well-being of farmers and their communities. Furthermore, the study showed that price premiums are only one of many elements defining the success of certification, particularly important for motivating farmers to join, but less so to explain retention and upgrading. The case of Colombian coffee growers illustrates how the connections between local social-ecological systems and larger global forces can produce more sustainable livelihoods and land uses.

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Plant Science, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d5857dc2edb5443d04dcfd87073801ce374d7a9d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

1. Ruerd Ruben
2. C. Shackleton

In Plant Science

1. Samuel N. Njuguna
2. Willem Elbers
3. B. V. Rijsbergen
4. Ruerd Ruben
5. R. Fort

In Strategy and Management

1. Samuel N. Njuguna
2. Willem Elbers
3. B. V. Rijsbergen
4. Ruerd Ruben
5. C. Shackleton
6. R. Fort
7. M. Qaim

Citations in the corpus

• The ambivalent impact of coffee certification on farmers' welfare: A matched panel approach for cooperatives in Central Kenya (2016, background): “Most plot-level investment are, however, limited to improving variable input use and optimizing tree density, whereas in-depth investments in coffee tree renovation are still scarce (Ruben & Verkaart, 2011; Rueda & Lambin, 2013).”
• Wild Edible Fruits: A Systematic Review of an Under-Researched Multifunctional NTFP (Non-Timber Forest Product) (2019, background): “Although ecological outcomes of plantation and agroforest certification are emerging [227,228], the literature on NTFP certification is sparse.”