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The Struggle for Control of a Commodity Chain: Instant Coffee from Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

John M. Talbot
John M. Talbot*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Latin America has long provided most of the world's coffee. At the same time, dependence on coffee exports has profoundly affected many Latin American countries. This research note will analyze the relationship between primary-commodity exporting and development by means of a case study of attempts by Latin American countries to industrialize their exports by exporting instant coffee rather than green coffee beans. A commodity-chain approach will be used to explain how the initiatives of Latin American states and private firms have responded to and changed the structure of the global system of producing instant coffee. Three Latin American countries—Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador—have become significant exporters of instant coffee, but the benefits they have realized from this effort have been limited by the control exercised by transnational corporations over the global production system.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , 1997 , pp. 117 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

∗

An earlier version of this research note was presented at the Nineteenth Annual Conference on the Political Economy of the World System, held at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, 21–22 April 1995. I would like to thank four anonymous LARR reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft.

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