Inequalities and ecological pressures in food value chains
A multidisciplinary project led by the AgroEcological Transition Group at ETH Zurich aims to understand the links between collective decision-making and ecological footprints in coffee and soybean value chains.
The global food system is in crisis. Global hunger is on the rise. At the same time, agri-food value chains are among the main drivers of humanity’s overstepping the planetary boundaries related to climate change1 and as well as widening social inequities. The root causes of the sustainability crisis of the global food systems includes the multidimensional and increasingly asymmetric power relations among the actors involved.
Power asymmetries in coffee and soy production
In coffee and soy value chains, power asymmetries are a major social problem. Peasant communities, family farmers, rural workers, women, small-scale traders, artisanal food processors, and resource-poor consumers remain widely excluded from the decision-making processes through which these value chains are governed2.
In addition, despite both coffee and soybean being two highly relevant commodities in globalized food chains, both have noted negative ecological impacts. Both coffee and soybean production can create sustainability problems like the complex, dynamic processes and implications of soil degradation, causing deforestation in tropical, biodiversity-rich ecosystems. Such deforestation results in biodiversity loss and soil erosion, which in turn constrain rural families’ livelihoods. Transport and processing further add to the already high carbon footprint of production3.
Deliberative quality in value chains
Deliberation, defined as citizens’ political conversation and collective decision-making, is a proposed method to enhance public goods and society’s sustainability interests4. Applying this concept to coffee and soybean production, researchers at ETH Zurich are aiming to highlight the link between deliberative quality of value chains and their ecological “foodprints.” Ongoing research will clarify to what degree and how the democratization of food systems in Democratic Republic of Congo and Brazil, expressed by deliberative quality, can contribute to policy efforts for food system sustainability.
The researchers are members of the Agroecological Transition Group, lead by Professor Johanna Jacobi. The project, called DELIBERATE and funded by Swiss National Science Foundation Ecceleneza program, utilizes a variety of methods and a multidisciplinary approach. To highlight the participation of the actors and to see the links between deliberation in the governance of agri-food value chains and sustainability impacts, quantitative methods such as life cycle and ecological footprints assessments are employed as well as qualitative methods such as ethnography and discourse analysis.
Collaboration is key
As a first step, the research team explored field sites in Democratic Republic of Congo and Brazil early in 2022. Now, each member of the team is conducting their own research and doing more intensive fieldwork trips to both production countries and in the end-of-chain countries (Switzerland and EU).
A key component of the research is collaborating with local students and researchers at each field location. For example, Dr. Marie Sigrist traveled to South of Minas Gerais, Brazil to meet with around 50 actors of the coffee value chain to try to understand their position in the value chain. Semi-structured interviewing and participant observation elucidated local practices, participation, and deliberation but also the existing power asymmetries and current environmental issues they have to face.
For doing this ethnography of coffee production in the mountainous region of Campo das Vertentes region and Serra da Mantiqueira, Brazil, Marie was equipped with her field notebook, voice recorder, and camera. She observed practices, interviewed several actors, and had many informal conversations with the goal of contacting the diverse participants of the local coffee value chain from family farmers to traders.
“Agri-food chains involve as much ecological aspects and agriculture technologies as the cultural and social dynamics that producers, intermediaries and consumers carry with them. In that sense, when doing research on an agri-food chain, it is crucial to mix methods from environmental and social sciences to get a broad understanding.”Marie Sigrist
At the same time, doctoral student Braida Thom is focusing on the end-of-chain coffee drinkers in Switzerland. She conducted a quantitative survey on coffee consumption habits and preferences at a coffee festival in Zürich. She also interviewed Swiss coffee roasters, focusing on completing a life cycle assessment. The two researchers will work to merge their results to create a novel exploration of deliberative quality of the coffee value chain and its ecological footprints.
Such mixing of methods and local collaborations is currently also ongoing for soybean value chains in Paraná, Brazil. Johanna Jacobi has met with soybean farmers and collected observations at agricultural and participatory events. Doctoral student Réussite Bugale Malembaka also began fieldwork in Paraná, collecting data for resource use intensity and measuring the environmental life cycle assessment of different forms of soy production and use.
Research continues in South Kivu in Democratic Republic of Congo, Brazil, and Switzerland. The group will publish the synthesis of their results and share them with local actors in planned workshops. Such sharing of gathered knowledge is important to inform policy efforts for food system sustainability and enhance collective decision-making in value chains.
More information on DELIBERATE project: https://agroecological-transitions.ethz.ch/research/food-democracy.html
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Organic coffee plantation, South of Minas Gerais, Brazil (Image: Marie Sigrist). -
Coffee workers, South of Minas Gerais, Brazil (Image: Marie Sigrist). -
Description of weeding practice in the Marie’s ethnographical fieldnote book, South of Minas Gerais, Brazil (Image: Marie Sigrist). -
Rural worker sorting organic coffee on a farm, South of Minas Gerais, Brazil (Image: Marie Sigrist). -
Observations during coffee sorting on an organic coffee farm, Campo das Vertentes, Brazil (Image: M. Sigrist).
References
1Springmann, M., Clark, M., Mason-D’Croz, D., Wiebe, K., Bodirsky, B.L., Lassaletta, L., de Vries, W., Vermeulen, S.J., Herrero, M., Carlson, K.M., Jonell, M., Troell, M., DeClerck, F., Gordon, L.J., Zurayk, R., Scarborough, P., Rayner, M., Loken, B., Fanzo, J., Godfray, H.C.J., Tilman, D., Rockström, J., Willett, W., 2018. Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits. Nature 562, 519- 525.
2Grabs, J., Ponte, S., 2019. The evolution of power in the global coffee value chain and production network. Journal of Economic Geography 19, 803-828.
3UNCTAD, 2015. Sustainability in the Coffee Sector: Exploring Opportunities for International Cooperation, in: Development, U.N.C.o.T.a. (Ed.)
Urioste, M., 2013. The Great Soy Expansion: Brazilian Land Grabs in Eastern Bolivia, in: Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, Transnational Institute, Fundación Tierra (Eds.), Land & Sovereignty in the Americas Series, Oakland
Fehlenberg, V., Baumann, M., Gasparri, N.I., Piquer-Rodriguez, M., Gavier-Pizarro, G., Kuemmerle, T., 2017. The role of soy production as an underlying driver of deforestation in the South American Chaco. Global Environmental Change 45, 24-34.
4Richards, R., 2018. Deliberative Mini-publics as a Partial Antidote to Authoritarian Information Strategies. Journal of Public Deliberation 14, 1-32