Gavin Fridell - Coffee

Resources Series

Gavin Bridge & Philippe Le Billon, Oil

Jennifer Clapp, Food

Peter Dauvergne & Jane Lister, Timber

Elizabeth R. DeSombre & J. Samuel Barkin, Fish

David Lewis Feldman, Water

Derek Hall, Land

Michael Nest, Coltan

Ian Smillie, Diamonds

For Sasha, Sebastian, and Kate

The author would like to thank many colleagues and friends for their advice, inspiration, and support over the years, including Haroon Akram-Lodhi, Greg Albo, Bill Barrett, David Friesen, Ilan Kapoor, David McNally, Viviana Patroni, Darryl Reed, John Talbot, Steven Topik, and Tony Winson. Very special thanks are due Mark Gabbert, Martijn Konings, and Liisa North for our many lengthy chats related to coffee and beyond. An immeasurable debt is owed to all of those who agreed to take time from their busy lives to be interviewed over the years and facilitate my current and earlier research on coffee and commodities in Mexico, the Caribbean, Canada, and Europe. Christina Sayers and Amr El-Alfy were excellent graduate research assistants and Jenny Kaulback and Cassie MacDonald offered invaluable administrative support. Louise Knight and Pascal Porcheron from Polity Press, as well as the anonymous reviewers, provided superb guidance in improving the work and seeing it through. The author is indebted to the International Coffee Organization (ICO) for permitting him the unique opportunity to observe its annual meeting in London, England, in March 2013. Financial and institutional support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canada Research Chair program, and Saint Marys University is gratefully acknowledged.

Above all, I would like to thank my family, in particular my espresso club, Sebastian and Sasha, who have infused more energy into the house than any number of coffees could possibly accomplish, and Kate Ervine, as always my unwavering ally in life, without whose guidance and knowledge this book could not have been written. Any errors or omissions, of course, are entirely the authors own.

Following the global coffee market is a daunting task for any researcher, not least because of the dramatic ups and downs of coffee prices. When I began my graduate studies as a masters student in 1996, coffee prices were in the middle of a five-year recovery after a previous four-year collapse. The coffee composite indicator price, a commonly used estimate that combines different quality beans with different prices, dropped to extreme lows from 1990 to 1993, reaching as low as 54 cents per pound, only to recover starting in 1994, eventually reaching as high as $1.38 per pound. When I started my doctoral work in 1998, the mini-boom had already ended, with prices collapsing once again, this time to the lowest seen in 30 years and by some estimates the lowest prices in real value