The Geographical Journal, Vol. 172, No. 2, June 2006, pp. 156–171 © 2006 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2006 The Royal Geographical Society 0016-7398/06/0002-0001/$00.20/0 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Responding to the coffee crisis: a pilot study of farmers’ adaptations in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras HALLIE EAKIN*, CATHERINE TUCKER† AND EDWIN CASTELLANOS‡ *Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106 - 4060, USA E-mail: eakin@geog.ucsb.edu †Department of Anthropology and the Center for the Study of Institutions, Population and Environmental Change (CIPEC), Indiana University, USA E-mail: tuckerc@indiana.edu ‡Centro de Estudios Ambientales, Universidad de Valle de Guatemala, Guatemala E-mail: ecastell@uvg.edu.gt This paper was accepted for publication in November 2005 This article explores the impacts of market shocks and institutional change on smallholder livelihoods, and the challenge of adaptation in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras. The rapid decline in coffee prices since the dissolution of the International Coffee Agreement in 1989 has had widespread and profound impacts across coffee-producing regions. The data collected in the three case studies of this project confirm the severity of the impact, particularly in the Mexican and Guatemalan communities. They also illustrate the importance of the historical relationship between farmers and public institutions in defining farmers’ perception of risk, their awareness of the nature of the changes they face, and thus the flexibility of their responses to present and future uncertainty. The project’s findings indicate that the existence and development of local networks among farmers, service providers and information sources may be critical for facilitating adaptation, particularly in the context of economic liberalization and globalized agriculture. KEY WORDS: Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, coffee, livelihood analysis, adaptation, vulnerability, globalization Introduction T he question of how agricultural systems can or cannot adapt to market fluctuations and economic change is a central focus of academic debate and public policy concern (McMichael 1994; Reilly 1995; Goodman and Watts 1997; Smithers and Smit 1997). Smallholder farmers have been singled out as one population that may be particularly vulnerable to market fluctuations and global economic change, based on the observation that the impacts of global economic volatility are often felt more severely among the world’s peasant and smallholder farmers. Moreover, these farmers tend to have relatively few resources with which to cope (O’Brien and Leichenko 2000; Leichenko and O’Brien 2002). Coffee producers exemplify this sensitivity. For over a decade, world coffee prices have been at historic lows, driven by a global process of market deregulation and the concurrent concentration of market power in the hands of a small number of multinational commodity traders and coffee dis- tributors (IDB, USAID and WB 2002; Ponte 2002). The impact on coffee-producing countries – most of whom consume negligible quantities of coffee domestically – has been serious. According to one development agency report, revenue from coffee sales in Central America declined by 44% in just one year (1999–2000) (IDB, USAID and WB 2002).