1. Introduction
Coffee is one of the most important commodities worldwide, at
times only surpassed by oil (Ponte, 2002). Even so, the price paid to
coffee producers in 2001 was the lowest in real terms in 100 years
and below production costs in many parts of the tropical America
(ICO, 2002; Varangis et al., 2003). Small coffee producers struggle
to secure satisfactory economic returns on a volatile world market,
where climatic events and few large companies influence prices
significantly (Ponte, 2002; Muradian and Pelupessy, 2005). One
possibility for small holder farmers to gain increased market
shares and to reduce their vulnerability to fluctuating prices is to