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How Field Mapping Can Increase Profitability For Coffee Producers
How can you achieve both higher productivity and improved quality on your coffee farm? By using field mapping. The method can help you better understand your land, improve yield and quality, and create an opportunity to match both your specialty and commodity coffee to its correct market.
Take a look at what field mapping is, how it works, and what is preventing it from being more widely used.
What Is Field Mapping?
Field mapping is agricultural data analysis. By gathering and analysing data about your coffee crops, you can introduce more precise management plans, monitor quality, and potentially increase yield. The coffee can then be sold as either commodity or specialty grade to the relevant market.
In simple terms, field mapping allows you to match the right coffee to the right part of your land and understand what it needs to thrive.
Through data analysis, you can mark lots with high potential for additional investment of resources. Lots with lower potential may receive lower investment, in line with their predicted profitability. After harvesting and processing, each lot is sold to its appropriate market.
By using methods such as soil analysis and visual data, field mapping can save producers time, effort, and money.
Why Use Field Mapping?
In 2016, the global coffee yield average was 17 bags per hectare. This varied wildly from 42 bags per hectare in Vietnam, 23 bags per hectare in Brazil, to 8 bags per hectare in Ethiopia. The ICO attributed this variation to poor farming practices. It stated that “less than 10% of smallholders in Africa use crop protection or fertilisers, and most tend not to utilise basic agronomic techniques”.
At the fourth World Coffee Conference, in 2016, Geraldine Joselyn Fraser-Moleketi, presenting as the Special Envoy on Gender of the African Development Bank, stated “we must support farmers to achieve higher coffee productivity and improved quality through better farm management practices”.
These better farm management practices include field mapping. Let’s look at the practical benefits, some real-life examples, and what field mapping involves.
Field Mapping Means Better Quality
Fazenda Santa Jucy is a farm in São Paulo state, Brazil that produces Arabica. The director, Alexandre Provencio, tells me that he introduced field mapping four years ago. He says that before doing so, the farm management plans on Santa Jucy were limited, with up to 20 hectares of land used to grow one variety of coffee.
After analysing the soil and cupping and classifying each crop, he found that “a field of about 20 hectares [had] about four different types of characteristics”. Each of these characteristics changed the way the same variety of coffee grew.
Armed with his new knowledge about the land, Alexandre split this 20 hectares into smaller lots based on the different characteristics. He has since been able to better direct his resources. Rather than applying fertiliser to all 20 hectares, he can use it only on the specific lots that need it. This reduces costs and allows each lot of coffee to thrive.
Matching Coffee to Its Correct Market
Alexandre tells me that the same site has the potential to produce exceptional specialty coffee, specialty coffee, and commodity coffee. The challenge at Santa Jucy, he says, is to keep the specialty percentages high. To achieve this, lots with potential to produce specialty grade coffee are treated differently to those predicted to produce commodity grade coffee.
It’s a skilful way to manage a farm. Rather than investing time and money into trying to get specialty grade coffee from all of a large lot, why not determine where it makes sense to focus on specialty and where lends itself to commodity grade coffee? And then treat each lot according to its final market.
Through soil testing, you can determine the best variety of coffee for each area of your farm and pinpoint where to use fertilisers. Rather than viewing commodity and specialty as better or worse than one another, think of it as matching the land to its best coffee and then that coffee to the right market. Ideally, the two crops should support one another. Alexandre even says that you that “you cannot have specialty without commodity”.
Without field mapping, the coffee from all 20 hectares of Alexandre’s field might have been sold as commodity grade, despite having areas of specialty grade coffee. Field mapping can help you to better understand your land and coffee, and to more accurately predict profits.
How Field Mapping Works
Field mapping can be split into two areas of data analysis: agronomic and visual. The most common form of agronomic field mapping is soil analysis.
Let’s look at a concrete example. Nitrogen is necessary for healthy crop growth, but too much nitrogen in the later stages of growth can reduce the final size of the cherry. With soil analysis, you can check the nitrogen levels in your land and treat the soil accordingly. The final cherries will be larger, and the crop more profitable. Field mapping takes soil analysis a step further – rather than looking at soil quality in one area, it is the idea of looking at how soil varies across your farm and identifying how to best use each lot.
Manuel Ramos is the coordinator of the One by One sustainability programme in Guatemala. The initiative teaches smallholder farmers how to field map. He tells me that One by One teaches farmers to measure pH levels and nutrients in the soil, and then group their crops according to their deficiencies. Producers can then apply the right type and amount of fertiliser to the right lot.
For larger farms, visual field mapping through GIS technology can be more effective. Jarvis Technologies uses GIS and drone technology to analyse crops on large coffee farms. The company’s CEO, Luis Gomez, tells me that this technology is able to produce high-resolution images, GIS-interactive maps, and 3D models of farms.
Luis says that it can take one or two months to manually map a farm, but that with GIS and drone technology, 100 hectares can be captured within 30 minutes. Results can be delivered to producers within a day or two.
This quick turnaround is essential for preventing the spread of visible diseases. Leaf rust, for example, can spread across a farm in as little as 15 days. With GIS mapping, you can see the exact coordinates of affected areas and know precisely where to apply fungicides.
The Costs and Practicalities of Field Mapping
Although field mapping is useful for both smallholders and large-scale farmers, and can be applied to both commodity and specialty crops, its use is limited by expense. At present, there is a lack of affordable technology designed for smallholder farmers and access to technology is limited.
But there are affordable ways to start introducing the principles to your farm. Consider which crops grow best in which area and look into basic soil testing. By identifying nutritional deficiencies, you can choose which variety of coffee will best fit each lot of your land and where to invest more resources. You can also cup coffees from each lot and evaluate the quality to give you insight into which area suits which variety.
Field mapping can enable you to better understand your land, direct resources, and market the final coffee – whether it is commodity, specialty, or both.
Choosing The Right Coffee Varieties For Your Farm
An important part of producing quality coffee is choosing the right varieties for your land. Why invest in plants that need additional resources that aren’t reflected in the final price? But how do decide which is the right variety for you?
Choosing a type of coffee should be based on a number of factors including genetics, environment, access to the market, and budget. Let’s look at these elements and what else to consider when choosing a variety of coffee.
Genetic Advantages
Different types of coffee have different characteristics, including flavor, pest-resistance, yield, and more. But these genetic differences should only be one consideration in choosing a variety. For example, Robusta is generally more pest- and disease-resistant than Arabica, but Arabica has more desirable flavors and therefore a bigger market with better prices, so most producers choose to grow it.
Jorge Raul Rivera, is the producer of Finca Santa Rosa in San Ignacio, El Salvador. He tells me that farmers in El Salvador often choose to grow Pacamara despite its relatively low yield and vulnerability to coffee leaf rust. “We look at the [quality of the] variety, not the ease of maintenance,” he says. “Quality is always better in a plant that produces less.”
The choice of variety will affect how a farm is managed, to whom the producer will market their beans, and will influence what method of processing is used. Carlos Pineda is the director of the school of coffee tasting at Instituto Hondureño del Café. He says that “the coffee variety lets us know the versatility that the coffee plant will have.”
Climate & Environment
The place where you grow coffee should be a major factor in deciding which variety to produce. One variety may have a high yield and be in demand, but does it thrive in your climate?
There’s no point investing in a crop that needs a relatively cool, dry environment if you live in a warm, humid one. It either won’t produce high-quality beans or it will require much more investment to do so.
Diego Cobo is the manager of Elixir Cafe in Cauca, Colombia. He says, “The variables that we need to consider for quality are genotype, the place of origin of the seed, and the characteristics of the field.”
He tells me that Castillo is a popular variety in the region he lives in for its ease of maintenance. He says that it’s a variety that is already adapted to the local environment and tolerant to coffee leaf rust, a potentially devastating disease.
Make sure to do detailed research into your climate including rainfall, humidity, and temperature. You may also want to use field mapping techniques such as soil analysis to evaluate which varieties will thrive on your land and what amounts of fertilizer will be beneficial. This kind of analysis can reveal that it’s better to grow two or more varieties in different areas of the farm, rather than planting the all of the land with the same variety.
Resources & Budget
The varieties you choose should also be based on your access to resources and budget. Before choosing what to plant, work out whether you have the funds to cover all the expenses associated with the specific variety and if all the supplies are available in your area.
Diego tells me that some Colombian producers choose to grow Geisha. He says that this variety needs five or six fertilizations per year versus the three required for Castillo. Producers who grow Geisha also need to be more aware of pests and the overall maintenance is more complicated, he says. Without the budget for workers, pest control, and fertilizer, this likely wouldn’t return a good yield and may mean a loss of investment.
Consider The Market
It’s important to consider consumer demands and your own access to the market when choosing a variety. If you invest in specialty coffee but don’t have the relationships to sell it at the right price, you may be left at a loss. Similarly, if there’s no demand for the variety you grow, or it is in surplus, you may be forced to sell it at below-market prices.
Carlos says, “Another factor to consider when selecting coffee varieties is the market, the elegance of the cup, and who is going to buy it.”
So, do some research into local selling opportunities and consider joining an association or cooperative that could help you make new business relationships. As an aligned group of producers, you may have better access to resources, be able to leverage better marketing and business opportunities, and learn from one another’s experiences.
How to Choose Your Specific Plants
Many farmers buy seeds or plants from a vendor, but others use their own seeds. Jorge tells me that it’s common for producers to use local seeds in El Salvador and that they offer an advantage because the plants are already adapted to the environment. He says that using local seeds allows more confidence in the purity and hardiness of the variety, and that this results in better quality in the final cup.
He cautions against using varieties developed elsewhere, saying that they will need to adapt to their new environment and that this may impact quality.
If you decide to use local plants for seed, choose mother plants that are healthy and vigorous with straight, thick trunks. The primary branches should be not too distant from each other. Opt for plants that have shown fast development and abundant yield of cherries. Branches with the highest number of nodes have the most productivity, so take cherries from these branches and select only healthy and completely ripe ones.
Diego tells me about a traditional method that he says many coffee producers use. Harvest 100 mature, healthy cherries and submerge them in water. If the floating cherries are less than eight, that is a good candidate to be a mother plant.
He explains that it’s not recommended to use a plant that has a lot of floating cherries, because these are the ones with low density, which means they’re likely less developed and have a low probability of germination.
Choosing the right varieties for your farm is a balance of many interrelated factors. Make sure that you’re being honest in your evaluation of your own circumstances and do some research into the different varieties and local resources. By carefully considering genetic components, environmental conditions, and the market, you can find the most appropriate varieties for your farm.
Coffee Farms & Guest Rites: Saudi Arabia’s Unique Coffee Culture
Saudi Arabia is a country of two coffee cultures: Arabic and specialty. With one, you have highly ritualized and historic coffee traditions that welcome guests. With the other, you have have a growing appreciation for lighter roasts and third wave brewing methods – and even some specialty coffee production.
Yes, that’s right: Saudi Arabia has coffee farms.
Khaled Almadi of Elixir Bunn, a roastery and café in Riyadh, agreed to talk to me about how these two traditions live side-by-side – and how he expects Saudi’s specialty industry to keep growing.
What Is Traditional Arabic Coffee?
Traditional Arabic coffee has a long history and great social significance – so much so that UNESCO has labeled it an Intangible Cultural Heritage. UNESCO describes it as “a ceremonial act of generosity”, and it can be used to welcome guests, celebrate weddings, and even apply pressure in negotiations should a guest refuse to drink it.
Khaled says, “The ritual mainly takes place in homes, Bedouin tents, or at events. In cafés and restaurants, the ritual is not entirely compliant due to the commercialized aspect of service.”
Traditionally, the coffee beans would be roasted in front of the guest before being ground and brewed in a dallah, a beautiful Arabic coffee pot. Nowadays, however, the beans are typically roasted in the kitchen. Spices, such as cardamom, are often added.
The drink should be poured with the left hand and served to guests with the right hand. These guests should then consume it without sugar – despite the bitter taste. A bowl of dates may be provided to sweeten the taste, and it’s traditional to drink one to three cups.
Two Coffee Cultures: Specialty & Arabic
Saudi Arabia’s coffee is steeped in tradition, but Khaled tells me there is room for specialty coffee culture as well. He sees the two thriving simultaneously.
In fact, because the Arabic coffee ritual is difficult to duplicate in cafés, Khaled says that there is a gap to be filled by other coffee trends. Many of his customers may drink Arabic coffee at home with guests, but they will also consume specialty coffee – either at home or in his café. They just needed to be introduced to it first.
Non-Arabic coffee entered the mainstream, he continues, when international chains appeared in Riyadh. Establishments like Dunkin Donuts familiarized people with filter brews. And as those international chains “normalized” filter coffee, it was easier for third wave coffee shops and roasteries like Elixir Bunn to exist.
Rapid Growth
Elixir Bunn has seen a 220% growth since opening, with practically no marketing budget (they use social media for organic reach). Their success, Khaled tells me, lies in a focus on three things: quality products, quality service, and coffee education. And the latter is key to the development of Saudi’s coffee scene.
Khaled tells me that Elixir Bunn makes coffee education available both through the website and in the café. What’s more, it grows with its customers: as his staff shares information about coffee producers, origins, and processing methods, their customers share their thoughts and preferences.
What’s more, specialty is appealing to different demographics. Gender segregation is expected in Saudi restaurants and coffee houses. In fact, in 2016, the Starbucks in Riyadh was required to stop serving women after the barrier between the “bachelor” and “family” areas of the café collapsed. However, Khaled has recently expanded in order to serve women in a dedicated area of the coffee shop – a sign of the growing interest in third wave coffee.
This interest is also extending to competitions. In 2016, Saudi Arabia saw its first ever AeroPress Champion. And this year, Sara Al-Ali was a finalist in the World Cezve/Ibrik Championship.
Of course, specialty coffee is still a young tradition in Saudi Arabia, with much to build towards. Khaled says, “We’d expect a smoother ride when we create a specialty coffee association of Saudi Arabia.” But its quick development holds great promise for the region’s third wave.
The Saudi Coffee Palate
Khaled explains that it takes a few months for customers’ palates to adjust to specialty coffee. However, once they develop a taste for it, they are eager to explore different brewing methods and origins.
He’s noticed that the most popular specialty regions tend to be Colombian and Brazilian. There’s also an uptick in East African coffees – partly because of Saudi Arabia’s geographic location. What’s more, while it’s difficult for many other countries to import Yemeni coffee, it is abundant here.
And earlier this year, Saudi Arabia produced its first ever specialty coffee crop. Time will tell how Saudi customers respond to coffee grown in their own country.
Specialty Coffee Farming in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia’s specialty coffee crop is the fruit of years of work. The country has mainly a desert climate, with high daytime temperatures and low nighttime ones. There are only two exceptions to this: a strip of steppe in the west, and a small, humid region, with mild temperatures and long summers, just north of Yemen.
It is in this humid area, in the region of Addayer, that Saudi Arabia’s first specialty coffee farms exists. Sitting less than 15 miles away from the Yemen border, Addayer – along with other nearby counties – holds great potential for coffee production.
This year, the farms produced natural and washed coffee. Some of the lots were then independently cupped at 80, 81 and 84 points. Khaled tells me they show “promise”. He describes them as having “typical notes” for coffees cupping in the low 80s – chocolatey, nutty, and so on – but with a “surprising sweetness”.
It’s an exciting start for a new specialty coffee origin.
Traditional brewing methods and hospitality, third wave roasters and consumers, and even coffee production – Saudi Arabia’s coffee culture is rich, complex, and still growing. And with ambitious industry leaders pushing it forwards by building specialty coffee farms and competing on the world stage, it will be interesting to see how the region develops.
A Brief History of Coffee Consumption
How did humans create coffee? Why? And how did we end up here, with world coffee championships and an industry worth US $30 billion in exports every year (OEC, 2015)?
Oh, and for that matter, what even is first, second, third, and fourth wave coffee?
If you’ve ever wondered about these questions, get ready to find out the answers. I’m going to take you through a very brief history of coffee consumption, from the 1400s through to today.
Traditional Coffee Consumption: Guest Rites & Politics
It’s hard to trace the consumption of coffee back to its first discovery. It seems to have emerged somewhere in Africa and the Middle East, perhaps as a form of medicine or stimulant. Yet the only thing we can say for sure is that, in the 1400s, it was being brewed in Sufi monasteries.
Traditional coffee consumption in the Middle East used coffee to welcome guests and as a backdrop to negotiations. It was often a ritualised experience that took place in the home.
During the Ottoman Empire, coffee also started to be sold at marketplaces before becoming favoured at court. From there, the coffee house emerged.
And as coffee spread to Europe – and then, through European imperialism, further around the world – its association with politics, male social circles, and liberal thought solidified.
From Sweden to Colombia, the ruling classes developed anxieties that the drink was a front for fomenting political and social unrest. Religious leaders also saw the café as a place of dangerous thought: in 1702, ministers in Salem mocked the “learned witlings of the coffeehouses” for doubting that witchcraft might exist.
These attitudes continue up to the 1800s, when coffee culture started to resemble modern-day coffee consumption.
First Wave Coffee & Commodification
The first wave of coffee is marked by its increasing availability. While coffee used to be a drink of the elite, whether they were royalty or simply intellectuals, the first wave brought it into the kitchen.
During the 1800s, Folger’s and Maxwell House opened up shop. Both instant coffee and the percolator, a coffee-maker that remained in wide use until the 1970s, were also invented this century.
Then, in the early 1900s, the espresso machine appears – and shortly after that, Nescafé and freeze-dried instant coffee do as well. While instant had already existed, freeze-drying technology allowed it to stay good for longer, making it both easier and cheaper to transport over long distances.
What’s more, US American soldiers stationed abroad, in countries like Korea, helped instant coffee consumption to become more widespread.
Second Wave Coffee & Specialty Consumption
The second wave is marked by an increasing concern over coffee quality and the specialty experience.
Starbucks was founded in 1971, in 1974 Erna Knutsen used the phrase “specialty coffee” in Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, and in 1982 the Specialty Coffee Association of America was founded.
This movement was also shaped by the Colombian coffee icon of Juan Valdez, who first appeared in the late 1950s. A fictional character created by the country’s national coffee association, FNC/Café de Colombia, for their marketing campaigns, he became famous across the US. His role was to remind people that some coffees really do taste better than others.
Third Wave Coffee & The Origin Story
As a coffee producer, Juan Valdez didn’t just pre-empt second wave coffee; his invention also heralded the eventual arrival of third wave coffee. But it wasn’t until 2002 that Trish Rothgeb declared it was here.
With the third wave comes a focus on the story behind the cup. The coffee variety, country of production, terroir, processing method, roast profile, brewing method… Consumers started to realise the impact that all this can have on the taste of the final coffee. On some coffee farms, experimental processing methods also emerged in an attempt to cater to this new, more discerning type of consumer.
That isn’t to say that all third wave coffee was based on new technology: the Chemex, for example, was invented in 1941. However, there was a new interest in complexity, greater acidity, and how to manipulate brewing to taste the unique flavours of the coffee beans themselves.
What’s more, coffee got competitive. The Best of Panama and Cup of Excellence appeared in the late ‘90s, while the first World Barista Championship took place in 2000. The idea of elite coffee varieties really appeared in 2004, after a Panamanian Geisha sold at auction for US $21/lb – rising, in later years, to US $350.25/lb.
Is There a Fourth Wave?
The term “fourth wave” is a divisive one: some believe it doesn’t exist beyond marketing. Others argue that it could be used to indicate a drive towards greater use of technology and science in coffee brewing.
For now, however, most people consider us to still be in the third wave of coffee.
So there you have it – a very brief 600-year history of coffee consumption. Here’s to the next 600!
The Effect of Specialty Coffee Certification on Household Livelihood Strategies and specialization
Kopi spesial adalah seluruh jenis kopi yang dianggap berbeda dari umumnya dan terkenal sebagai kopi premium. Daviron dan Ponte (2005) menyatakan bahwa terdapat tiga hal yang menyebabkan suatu kopi dianggap premium, yaitu berdasarkan in-person service, material, dan atribut simbolik. Hanya berdasarkan material dan atribut simbolik saja yang dapat dipengaruhi oleh produsen, sedangkan in-person service hanya dipengaruhi oleh tempat kopi tersebut disajikan. Aspek material sangat dipengaruhi oleh kualitas biji kopi (intrinsic value) sedangkan aspek atribut simbolik dipengaruhi oleh lokasi penanaman biji kopi dan sustainable labels. Sustainable labels seringkali ditentukan oleh sertifikasi dari kopi tersebut.
Kopi spesial berdasarkan aspek atribut mulai dikenal sejak 1970 dan 1980-an, dikarenakan masyarakat mulai memperkenalkan kopi secara umum melalui perdagangan dan pengembangan kopi organik. Perkenalan kopi secara umum ini juga didukung dengan kesepakatan untuk memberikan sertifikasi khusus untuk budidaya kopi yang memiliki cita rasa lebih dan tidak merusak lingkungan. Gerakan ini disebut sebagai Latte Revolution.
Beberapa penelitian sebelumnya telah banyak yang membuktikan adanya peningkatan pasar kopi. Secara global, kopi bersertifikasi mengalami peningkatan volume transaksi hingga 433% dalam periode 2004-2009. Peningkatan pasar kopi ini juga ditandai dengan semakin banyaknya retailer yang masuk dalam pasar kopi. Secara global, terdapat 26 juta orang yang bekerja di sektor kopi dimana sebagian besar pekerja adalah golongan petani kecil.
Penelitian sebelumnya hanya menjelaskan mengenai perbedaan kopi bersertifikat dan non-sertifikat terhadap tingkat pendidikan petani atau aspek-aspek kualitatif saja. Padahal, petani-petani kecil sangat bergantung pada aspek pendapatan dari usaha kopi mereka. Oleh karena itu, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk melihat hubungan antara akses ke pasar kopi premium pada mata pencaharian masyarakat kecil di kelompok masyarakat kecil produsen kopi di Colombia Selatan. Penelitian ini juga bertujuan untuk melihat efek pendapatan yang dialami petani kecil kopi dari adanya kopi premium.
Industri Kopi di Kolombia
Kopi merupakan tanaman yang tumbuh di daerah pegunungan yang menyediakan lapangan kerja pada 563.000 produsen kecil kopi. Kolombia adalah salah satu negara dengan produsen kopi terbanyak dan penghasil kedua terbesar kopi Arabika. Kolombia juga merupakan negara dengan nilai pasar kopi terbesar berdasarkan International Coffee Organization (ICO). Kolombia memiliki keuntungan strategis sebagai negara yang cukup dekat dengan garis ekuator. Kementerian pertanian dan pembangunan desa Kolombia juga melakukan berbagai kebijakan yang aktif untuk meningkatkan potensi dari industri kopi. Pemerintah Kolombia berusaha meningkatkan subsidi pada petani kecil kopi dan menetapkan harga minimum yang lebih rendah dari sebelumnya untuk meningkatkan produksi kopi premium berkualitas tinggi dengan harga yang lebih terjangkau.
Akses Ke Pasar Premium
Secara umum, pasar kopi premium terbagi atas dua jenis yaitu pasar third party dan pasar swasta. Pasar third party adalah pasar tempat kopi berkualitas didagangkan tanpa merek tertentu berbeda dengan pasar swasta seperti Starbucks, Nestle, dan lain-lain. Dari segi produsen, penting diketahui bahwa terdapat perbedaan antara perkebunan bersertifikat dan pasar kopi premium. Walaupun produsen memiliki perkebunan tersertifikasi, namun itu tidak dapat menjamin ia untuk dapat masuk dalam pasar kopi premium. Namun, dapat diakui bahwa pasar kopi premium umumnya mendapatkan suplai kopi dari perkebunan bersertifikasi. Adanya peningkatan permintaan kopi premium menyebabkan peningkatan pada jumlah perkebunan bersertifikasi. Hal ini dilakukan hanya untuk dapat masuk ke pasar kopi premium dan terjual dengan harga yang lebih tinggi.
Data Penelitian
Penelitian dilakukan di daerah Nariono yang terbagi atas 3 wilayah geografis dimana terdapat 510 produsen kopi rumah tangga pada April hingga Mei 2012. Pemilihan responden dilakukan dengan metode stratified random sampling dari daftar yang sebelumnya telah disediakan oleh FNC. Data yang dikumpulkan berupa komposisi rumah tangga, karakteristik perkebunan, pendapatan rumah tangga, akses ke layanan finansial, kepemilikan tanah, dan beberapa data-data demografi. Untuk subjek yang memiliki perkebunan dengan jarak lebih dari 10.000 dari kota, maka akan dihitung menggunakan cost distance algorithms.
Diversifikasi Pendapatan
Berdasarkan tabel diatas, dapat terlihat bahwa sebagian besar penduduk di daerah Narino sangat menggantungkan kehidupan mereka dari perkebunan kopi. Untuk pengolah lahan sendiri, hasil dari perkebunan kopi bahkan mencapai 46% dari pendapatannya. Namun pendapatan dari perkebunan kopi justru memiliki nilai variasi yang paling besar ketimpang pos pendapatan lainnya. Hal ini bisa saja dikarenakan proporsinya yang besar terhadap pendapatan dan perbedaan pendapatan kopi yang tinggi di masyarakat sekitar.
Pendekatan Ekonomi
Dalam penelitian ini, disusun model untuk mengetahui bagaimana akses ke pasar spesial mempengaruhi strategi diversifikasi rumah tangga. Faktor yang dibuat yaitu efek dari aktivitas yang berubah dan efek dari perubahan pendapatan pada setiap aktivitas. Seharusnya, adanya peningkatan penghasilan pada salah satu aktivitas dalam perkebunan akan menjadikan pekerja cenderung mengalokasikan waktu lebih banyak pada aktivitas yang mendapatkan penghasilan lebih besar. Untuk mengamati keputusan partisipasi maka peneliti menyusun model regresi:
Dan untuk melihat korelasinya terhadap pendapatan rumah tangga, maka disusun pula model:
dij = variabel biner yang menunjukkan partisipasi rumah tangga i dalam aktivitas j
Yij = total pendapatan rumah tangga i dalam aktivitas j
Cij = dummy variabel dimana 1 untuk perkebunan bersertifikasi
Xij = kontrol variabel (land/labour ratio, land holding, and level of education)
Zij= kotrol variabel (jarak dari kota dan kondisi agro-ecological)
Persamaan pertama akan menggunakan model multivariate probit, sedangkan persamaan kedua akan menggunakan model multivariate tobit.
Hasil dan Pembahasan
Alokasi Aktivitas
Berdasarkan hasil regresi diatas, dapat dilihat bahwa kepemilikan perkebunan yang tersertifikasi dapat meningkatkan peluang seseorang melakukan usaha perkebunan non kopi atau kopi. Dari indikator pendidikan, ternyata hal ini tidak mempengaruhi keputusan partisipasi pada aktivitas perkebunan non kopi dan kopi. Dalam hal kepemilikan tanah, terdapat nilai signifikan pada peluang di sektor non kopi. Hal ini mengindikasi adanya kepemilikan tanah yang semakin besar cenderung mendorong seseorang untuk melakukan diversifikasi sehingga tingkat peluang partisipasi cenderung meningkat.
Pendapatan Rumah Tangga
Jika melihat dari segi pendapatan rumah tangga, adanya sertifikat perkebunan mengimplikasikan terjadinya realokasi dari pendapatan. Sertifikat perkebunan dapat meningkatkan pendapatan dari kopi namun terjadi penurunan dalam sektor perkebunan non kopi dan gaji perkebunan. Pendidikan juga ternyata mempengaruhi secara signifikan berbagai aktivitas kecuali perkebunan non kopi. Dari hal kepemilikan tanah, ternyata memiliki efek signifikan terhadap sektor perkebunan non kopi. Semakin jauh jarak perkebunan dengan kota juga ternyata mempengaruhi secara negatif pada sektor perkebunan non kopi.
Efek Total Pendapatan
Dari hasil kedua pendekatan ini, terdapat beberapa hal yang justru berbeda. Adanya sertifikasi pada perkebunan memanglah terbukti dapat meningkatkan pendapatan dari berkebun kopi, namun efek yang diberikan pada sektor non perkebunan kopi masih belum jelas diketahui. Terdapat implikasi bahwa sertifikat perkebunan secara keseluruhan tidak mengubah pendapatan total dari produsen karena tambahan keuntungan dari kopi tertutup oleh kerugian yang dialami sektor lain.
Kesimpulan
Pada masa sekarang, pemilik perkebunan memiliki kecenderungan untuk mendapatkan sertifikasi pada perkebunannya hanya untuk dapat masuk dalam pasar kopi premium. Kecenderungan ini ternyata dapat berdampak pada kehidupan pada pemilik perkebunan dari rumah tangga berpenghasilan ke bawah. Melalui penelitian yang dilakukan di daerah Narito, usaha untuk mendapatkan sertifikasi perkebunan ini ternyata dapat secara efektif meningkatkan pendapatan dari berkebun kopi. Namun, ternyata terdapat dampak lain dari sertifikasi ini. Adanya sertifikasi perkebunan yang berusaha didapatkan untuk menembus pasar kopi premium nyatanya justru menyebabkan penurunan pendapatan dari hasil perkebunan non kopi dan gaji. Hal ini pada akhirnya tidak akan memberikan efek apapun pada total pendapatan dari seluruh aktivitas yang dilakukan. Hal ini perlu untuk menjadi perhatian bagi pemerintah, dimana adanya peningkatan potensi di sektor kopi harusnya dapat diiringi oleh peningkatan kesejahteraan petani kopi golongan ke bawah.
Certification and Farmer organization: Indonesian Smallholder Perceptions of Benefits
Certification and participation in farmer organizations are associated with economic and social benefits for farmers. However, knowledge about the differences in the perceived benefits of participation in different organizations and certification schemes is limited. In this paper, we distinguish between three types of farmer organizations in the Indonesian coffee sector: farmer groups, cooperatives, and KUBEs. We compare the benefits farmers perceive from participating in these forms of organizations, including the benefits for unorganized farmers and farmers in different certification schemes (Fair Trade, UTZ, the Rainforest Alliance, and 4C). We find that certified farmers perceive higher benefits than uncertified farmers, and that organized farmers perceive higher benefits than unorganized smallholders. Farmers who hold dual membership (in a farmer group and a KUBE or cooperative) perceive greater benefits than farmers who participate in farmer groups. Although farmers in different certification schemes significantly differ in the benefits they perceive, we could not identify clear patterns based on the schemes. We conclude that integration of the different organizational forms, as well as a more concentrated collaboration between the ministries underlying each organisational form, may improve the benefits perceived by farmers in the Indonesian coffee sector.
Sertifikasi dan partisipasi dalam organisasi tani sering diasosiasikan dengan manfaat ekonomi dan sosial bagi para petani. Namun, pemahaman akan potensi perbedaan dalam persepsi atas manfaat berpartisipasi dalam berbagai organisasi dan skema sertifikasi masih terbatas. Dalam tulisan ini, kami membahas tiga jenis organisasi petani di sektor perkebunan kopi Indonesia: kelompok tani, koperasi, dan Kelompok Usaha Bersama (KUBE). Kami membandingkan manfaat yang dipersepsikan oleh para petani dalam bentuk-bentuk organisasi ini, termasuk manfaat bagi petani yang tidak ikut organisasi dan mereka yang memiliki skema sertifikasi lainnya (misalnya Fair Trade, UTZ, Rainforest Alliance, dan 4C).
Kami menemukan bahwa para petani bersertifikasi menerima manfaat yang lebih tinggi dibandingkan yang tidak bersertifikasi. Selain itu, petani terorganisir memiliki persepsi manfaat yang lebih tinggi dibandingkan mereka yang tidak terorganisir. Petani yang memiliki keanggotaan ganda (misalnya, ikut kelompok tani dan KUBE atau koperasi), memiliki persepsi manfaat yang lebih besar dibandingkan mereka yang hanya berpartisipasi pada kelompok tani. Meskipun petani dalam skema sertifikasi lain menunjukkan persepsi manfaat yang jauh berbeda satu sama lain, kami tidak dapat mengidentifikasi pola yang jelas berdasarkan skema yang ada. Kami menyimpulkan bahwa integrasi dari bentuk organisasi yang berbeda dan kolaborasi yang lebih terkonsentrasi antara kementerian yang menaungi setiap bentuk organisasi dapat meningkatkan manfaat yang diterima oleh petani di sektor tanaman kopi.
Sustainability standards and certification are regarded as tools to improve smallholders’ livelihoods, conditions and positions within the coffee market, and to enhance the environmental sustainability of coffee production (Giovannucci and Ponte 2005). However, research on the actual effects of certification can be considered inconclusive. Some studies on certification note negative effects, such as lower productivity and yields, increased costs, reduced prices, and decreased satisfaction with organisational service provision (Carlson and Palmer 2016; Ibanez and Blackman 2016; Ruben and Fort 2012; Valkila 2009; van Rijsbergen et al. 2016). Other studies on certification, however, find positive effects. These include higher prices, better productivity and coffee quality, better education, improved capacity building, better sanitation and networking, and enhanced organisational capacities (Astuti et al. 2015; Bacon 2005; Bacon et al. 2008; Barbosa de Lima et al. 2009; Giovannucci et al. 2008; Raynolds et al. 2004; Ruben and Zuniga 2011). These contrasting findings imply that the actual benefits of certification remain poorly understood and are therefore worth further exploration. Research on farmer benefits from certification in Indonesia occurs at the crossroads of research on certification and organisation. Indonesian coffee smallholders cannot become certified without being organised (Loconto and Dankers 2014), and farmer organisations have been promoted as an important means for linking smallholders to international, certified coffee markets. Organisations are believed to bring a form of collective action (e.g., internal group monitoring and training) that is essential to smallholders’ participation in certification (Narrod et al. 2009). Farmer organisations make the certification of smallholders economically feasible by offering economies of scale (Maertens and Swinnen 2009; Mausch et al. 2009) and by reducing the transaction costs for service providers working with smallholders (Thorp et al. 2005). Certification schemes therefore connect to farmer organisations rather than to individual farmers; this is also because connecting to the latter is considered inefficient due to the large number of farmers, and the variation in farmers’ financial opportunities, knowledge, and skills. Variations and individual limitations can be overcome by encouraging farmers to organise and work together. Therefore, membership of a farmer organisation has in practice become mandatory for smallholders to become certified (Brandi 2013; Pierrot et al. 2010), which makes it methodologically difficult to differentiate between the effects of certification and of organisation. Further, and though the literature tends to generalise farmer organisations, their manifestations are diverse. They cannot therefore be analysed or compared as homogeneous entities. In Indonesia we observe three types of farmer organisations in the coffee sector: farmer groups (kelompok tani), cooperatives, and KUBEs (kelompok usaha bersama, or joined business groups). These organisations have different structural characteristics and are managed by different ministries with varying sets of rules.
In this paper, we do not apply an empirical measurement of the actual effects of certification in the field, but we instead focus on the perception of benefits by smallholders. This differs from previous studies that evaluated actual effects in the field with robust longitudinal panel data or case studies (see Carlson and Palmer 2016; Ibanez and Blackman 2016; van Rijsbergen et al. 2016). We focus on the Indonesian coffee sector and analyse the perceived benefits that result from participation in the different types of farmer organisations and certification schemes. Most research on sustainability standards and certifications takes a managerial approach, in that it studies how the schemes unfold in practice and how their performance may be improved. By adopting such an approach, researchers implicitly accept the problematic definitions of the schemes as set by their northern- based initiators (mainly businesses that often collaborate with NGOs), although such definitions do not necessarily reflect the realities that smallholders face in their daily practices (Glasbergen 2018). Aside from this—considering a social constructivist research paradigm—the reality measured by ‘objective’ indicators in the field may not always correspond with the reality perceived by the farmers themselves (Offermans and Glasbergen 2017). In this study, we focus on farmers’ perceptions of benefits from organisation and certification, as farmers’ perceptions on sustainability standards and certifications are often neglected and this therefore presents a gap of knowledge that needs to be filled (Ibnu 2017).
Our research draws on two strands of literature: certification literature focusing on evaluating farmers’ benefits from participation in certification (Bray et al. 2002; Raynolds et al. 2004; Taylor et al. 2005); and organisation literature focusing on the benefits of organisation for farmers (Fischer and Qaim 2012; Hellin et al. 2009; Kaganzi et al. 2009; Markelova et al. 2009). Although both strands of literature are rich in their investigation and explanation of the effects and benefits of certification or organisation on farmer welfare and livelihood, very few studies consider and further question farmers’ own perceptions of benefits. We consider perceptions important because they significantly determine farmers’ satisfaction, which influences whether they continue participating in certification or not (Bravo et al. 2012; Oktami et al. 2014; Zainura et al. 2016). Furthermore, the existing literature fails to comprehensively understand the differences in potential benefits in different domains, and the extent to which perceived benefits vary among farmers belonging to different organisational forms or coffee certification schemes.
In a more concrete sense, this paper aims to contribute to knowledge about whether farmers participating in different certification schemes and organizational structures perceive variable benefits in differing benefit domains. This paper will address the following research questions:
- How do different forms of Indonesian farmer organisations differ, and how do they relate to certification?
- How do differences in perceived benefits relate to membership in differing types of organisations and certification schemes?
- What do the findings imply for more sustainable coffee production from the smallholders’ point of view?
In the following sections, we provide a literature review on the potential benefits of farmer organisation and certification, including an overview of the division of these benefits into five domains. Based on this review, we propose hypotheses on the influence of organisations and certification schemes on perceived benefits. We then outline our method and provide an overview of our respondents before we present our results, followed by our conclusions and reflection.
Potential Benefits of Farmer Organization and Certification
Although not specifically considering the role of certification, the existing literature extensively presents the benefits of farmer organisations. These benefits vary widely and range, from better job opportunities (Jena et al. 2015; Place et al. 2004; van Rijsbergen et al. 2016) to improved skills (Bitzer et al. 2013; Neilson 2008; Ruben and Zuniga 2011; Utting 2009), better bargaining power (Bacon 2010; Taylor et al. 2005), and greater networking opportunities (Taylor et al. 2005; Raynolds et al. 2004). In this paper, we divide benefits for farmers into five domains. The first domain comprises economic benefits such as cost savings through collective marketing, better prices for farmer products, improved access to inputs and production facilities, more secure land tenure, better access to credit, and the provision of options for saving money. The second domain is social or community benefits in the form of better education, health and housing, access to public facilities (e.g., safe drinking water and sanitation), support for organising social events, strengthened social relations among community members, and employment provision. The third domain relates to representation, as organisations may represent farmers in formal meetings and negotiate on their behalf with external parties such as the government or private firms. The fourth domain relates to capacity building through improved knowledge and skills; for example, through training, the provision of information and technical support, and encouraging participation in decision making (Bitzer et al. 2013; Neilson 2008; Ruben and Zuniga 2011; Utting 2009). In the fifth domain, we identify benefits in terms of networking, which often takes the form of collaboration with other organisations (such as private companies) to enhance financial capital and secure market access.
Some of these benefits, however, are associated not only with farmers’ membership of an organisation but also with their participation in certification. In the domain of economic benefits, for example, certified farmers are found to obtain higher prices for their coffee (Astuti et al. 2015; Bacon 2005), and to have higher productivity and better coffee quality than conventional farmers (Astuti et al. 2015; Ruben and Zuniga 2011). Certification may bring further social benefits such as improved education and sanitation (Barbosa de Lima et al. 2009) and is also found to play a role in improving capacity building (Raynolds et al. 2004), enhancing organisational capabilities (Ruben and Zuniga 2011), and improving networking capacities (Bacon et al. 2008).
In the literature, it is assumed that assets and/or (financial) capital affect an organisation’s ability to provide services (cash payment, credit, etc.), which in turn influences its members’ perceptions of benefits (Chandler and Hanks 1998; Holagh et al. 2014). As such, members may perceive more benefits in organisations with greater assets and/or capital than organisations with fewer assets and less capital.
The Landscape of Coffee Certification In Indonesia
Indonesian coffee smallholders are today faced with different certifications that differ in scope and history. The first coffee certificate in Indonesia was issued by the Rainforest Alliance (RA), implemented in Aceh province in 1993, followed by Fair Trade (FT) in the same province in 1997. UTZ became involved in the coffee sector in 2002, followed by 4C in 2006 (see appendix a). RA aims to support farmers in creating more sustainable livelihoods, improving farm productivity, and becoming more resilient to climate change. RA certification consequently concentrates on how farms are managed, with certification being awarded to farms that meet the standards of the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN). FT focuses on realising a better life for farming families in the developing world, through direct trade, community development, environmental stewardship, and guaranteed prices for their products. To further support farmers’ economic development, FT requires the first coffee buyers (i.e., cooperatives) to provide pre-financing for long-term contracts with farmers (Fair Trade 2017). UTZ aims to create transparency along the supply chain and to reward responsible coffee producers (UTZ 2017), whereas 4C aims to achieve global leadership to enhance economic, social, and environmental production, processing, and trading conditions for all who make a living in the coffee sector (GCP 2017). Given its baseline character, 4C is often considered to be the least demanding private certificate. More information on coffee certification schemes in Indonesia can be found in Astuti (2018).
In Indonesia, most coffee smallholders remain uncertified (around 93% in 2014) (Directorate General of Estate Crops 2014; ICO 2017; SCP 2014).
The Landscape of Farmer Organization In Indonesia
Organisations can be defined as intelligent systems in which groups of people deliberately cooperate with each other to achieve shared goals (Holagh et al. 2014). Individual smallholders participate in farmer organisations to achieve the benefits of these shared goals. In the Indonesian coffee sector, we distinguish between three types of farmer organisations: farmer groups, cooperatives, and KUBEs.
Farmer groups
In Indonesia, the central government initiated the formation of farmer groups in 1979 to facilitate the distribution of governmental aid to farmers, and, as from 2001, to negotiate the use of protected forests for coffee production (Arifin 2010). Farmer groups have formal status in the country (Nuryanti and Swastika 2011) and are currently regulated by the Ministry of Agriculture. According to a ministry regulation (Law 82/2013 on Farmer Groups), a farmer group is defined as a group of farmers formed on the basis of mutual interest, similarity in commodities, and geographic proximity. On average, a farmer group consists of 30 members, most of whom live in the same village. A farmer group’s main functions are to enhance cooperation among farmers, facilitate learning processes, and to help distribute tools, farming inputs, and credit from the government to farmers. Cooperation between farmers in a farmer group may result in economies of scale and improved coffee quality. It may also help the members to process their coffee cherries by providing them with shared access to equipment. We see that certified Indonesian coffee farmers commonly have a dual organisational membership, wherein their membership of a farmer group is combined either with a KUBE or a cooperative. Uncertified farmers may be part of a farmer group but not part of a KUBE or cooperative. They commonly connect to conventional channels involving middlemen and local traders (Astuti et al. 2015).
The establishment of a farmer group requires the participation of smallholder farmers, the village leader, community leaders, and agricultural extension officers. The members need to develop and present a formal agreement that needs to be signed by representatives of the different member groups. The management of a farmer group consists of a group leader, a secretary, and a treasurer. Any changes to the managerial structure need to be approved by the village leader and acknowledged by agricultural extension officers, as outlined in Law 82/2013. There is no need for farmers to contribute individual assets to a farmer group, although some financial contributions are usually made. As a non-legal entity, a farmer group may largely depend on support from the government; for example, to build its initial assets and/or capital.
Cooperatives
Cooperatives are developed based on the principles stated in Law 25/1992 on Cooperatives to increase economies of scale, improve production efficiency, and enhance the bargaining position of members. In practice, we see that cooperatives often help farmers buy inputs, and that they provide credit to coffee producers. According to the law, a cooperative must be founded by at least 20 individuals who contribute some of their wealth to the initial capital of the organisation. Their agreement to form a cooperative must be drawn up by a notary and legalised by the Indonesian Ministry of Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprise. A cooperative therefore has authorised rights and responsibilities but can also be sanctioned if it acts against the law.
The management of a cooperative comprises a general assembly, a board of directors, an audit committee, and an election committee. The assembly represents the highest policy-making body and meets at least once a year to decide the organisation’s policies and select its board of directors and committees. A cooperative generally prioritises democratic decision-making through voting, although the assembly mostly tries to reach consensus. Unlike in other organisational types, income generated by cooperatives (e.g., income from trading activities) must be equally shared among all members. As a legal entity, cooperatives are entitled to increase their assets and/or capital by obtaining loans from various sources (e.g., banks, private creditors, and other cooperatives), or by issuing obligations, as outlined in Law 25/1992. Therefore, cooperatives are generally more asset- and capital-rich than other organisations in the Indonesian coffee context. Legally, farmers do not have to join farmer groups in order to become members of cooperatives, although in practice most cooperative members do. This enables them to claim government support for things such as tools, fertilisers, and pesticides, and to participate in government programs in rural areas.
KUBEs
The Ministry of Social Affairs initiated the formation of KUBEs in 1983 to support the regulations on welfare services for the poor. The underlying idea was to strengthen existing micro-businesses1 by integrating them into larger business ventures. KUBEs may differ in size. Conceptually, a small KUBE is a collaboration of five to seven micro-businesses that agree to merge their assets. Medium KUBEs consist of eight to fifteen micro-businesses, while large KUBEs consist of sixteen to thirty. KUBEs are generally smaller than cooperatives in terms of assets and capital, and they mostly pay their farmers after receiving payment from buyers/ exporters, whereas cooperatives, if required, can pay their farmers in advance (Ibnu et al. 2015). KUBEs are also considered non-legal entities and therefore, unlike cooperatives, depend on contributions from owners for assets and capital, or on support from external parties, particularly the government.
KUBEs take care of cleaning, drying, and transporting coffee beans from farmer groups to the roasting companies (in the case of conventional coffee) or to exporters (for certified coffee) (Ibnu et al. 2015). Unlike cooperatives, KUBEs always connect to individual farmers through farmer groups. This means that KUBEs require farmers to first organise themselves in farmer groups. To be formally acknowledged by the government, and to be entitled to receive additional capital investments from the Ministry of Social Affairs, KUBEs must be verified by leaders at the village and sub-district levels (Roebyantho 2013; Suradi 2012).
In Indonesia, most smallholders (up to 75%) are still unorganised (Directorate General of Estate Crops 2014; ICO 2017; SCP 2014). Although most literature focuses on the effects of being organised or certified, uncertified and unorganised farmers may also experience benefits—for example, they may benefit from selling their coffee to local markets and maintaining long-term reciprocal connections with local traders or intermediaries (Wahyudi and Jati 2012).
Based on the certification and organisation literature referred to above, we have developed three hypotheses:
- Farmers participating in the more demanding schemes (RA, UTZ, FT) perceive more benefits than farmers participating in a less demanding scheme (4C).
- Farmers participating in organisations with more assets and/or capital perceive more benefits than farmers participating in organisations with fewer assets and/ or capital.
- Certified and organised farmers perceive more benefits in all domains than uncertified or unorganised farmers.
Method
We used semi-structured questionnaires to randomly survey certified and conventional coffee farmers in the two most important Robusta and Arabica coffee- producing provinces in Indonesia: Lampung (Tanggamus and West Lampung districts) and Aceh (Central Aceh and Bener Meriah districts). Lampung contributes 23.6% to national Robusta production, whereas Aceh contributes 25% to national Arabica production (Directorate General of Estate Crops 2014). In the study sites, most certified Arabica farmers register with cooperatives and participate in FT schemes, whereas certified Robusta farmers typically register with KUBEs and UTZ, RA, or 4C. In the field, and corresponding with what we have presented above, we found that most certified farmers have dual organisational memberships that combine participation in farmer groups with participation in either KUBEs (FGKUBE) or cooperatives (FG cooperative) (table 1). Uncertified farmers either participate in a farmer group (IFG) or act wholly independently (i.e., without organisational membership). From various villages, we indiscriminately selected 14 farmer groups that have affiliations with 5 KUBEs and 3 cooperatives. We then randomly distributed the questionnaires to 80 certified farmers who are members of the selected farmer groups. Together with the 80 uncertified smallholders, our total sample equals 160 respondents that can further be grouped into independent and uncertified farmers (n = 50), certified farmers with dual organisational memberships (n = 80), and uncertified farmers with single organisational memberships (n = 30). The uncertified farmers were randomly surveyed in the same regions (but in different villages) as the certified farmers. Table 1 shows the average characteristics of respondents.
To answer the first research question about the differences among the organisational forms, and the relation between organisation and certification, we determined organisational characteristics based on the government’s rules and regulations, such as Law 82/2013 on Farmer Groups, Law 25/1992 on Cooperatives, Law 42/1981, and Law 20/2008 on KUBEs. We then had open discussions with farmers, internal control system (ICS2) personnel of the certification schemes, and staff members of cooperatives and KUBEs. The aim of these discussions was to obtain a complete and verified overview of the characteristics of the organisation types. We discussed characteristics such as administration, focus of activities and orientation, decision-making processes, leadership, membership, and information flow.
To answer the second research question, we gathered benefits referred to in the literature (see appendix b), classified these into five domains of perceived benefits, and operationalised the benefits in concrete question items. In this process, we paid attention to the applicability of the question items to the Indonesian context. To assure a proper fit, we added questions on Indonesian cultural aspects such as arisan (a form of social gathering) and gotong royong (a form of communal work). We observed that the literature does not really connect these different benefits to one another. Accordingly, we assumed that some benefits (within each domain) would not be valued more (or considered more important) than others. We therefore treated all benefits (and all domains) equally by adopting equal weighting for all of them.
All question items are directly derived from the literature (see appendix b) and are presented on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from one (strong disagreement towards perceiving the mentioned benefit) to five (strong agreement). We use a t-test to analyse whether differences in perceived benefits correspond to differences in organisational membership status (unorganized versus organized smallholders) and participation in certification (uncertified versus certified farmers). We use a one-way ANOVA test to further analyse whether different organisational memberships (IFG, FGKUBE, and the FG cooperative) or participation in different certification schemes (4C, UTZ, FT, and RA) significantly contribute to differences in perceived benefits. We also applied an ordinal logistic regression model for each domain of perceived benefits (five in total) to gain knowledge on the extent to which organization, certification, and demographic variables explain variation in perceived benefits. The literature shows that demographic variables such as age, education, family size, experience in farming, and land ownership may explain variation in farmers’ perceptions (Adesina and Baidu-Forson 1995; Sherrick et al. 2004; Somda et al. 2002; Wheeler 2008). We test this through the inclusion of these variables in our regression model. In our ordinal logistic model, the perceived benefits are therefore explained by participation in certification, organizational membership, age (in years), education (in years), family size (number of people in a household), experience in farming (in years), and landownership (in hectares).
To quantify the composite dependent variable of perceived benefits, we have summed up farmers’ responses, resulting in n = 160 scores per benefit domain. The higher the score, the more the farmer agrees that benefits are perceived in the respective domain. In theory, the scores could vary between 3 (3 times a score of 1 in the domain of networking) and 75 for the domain of social benefits (covering 15 items that could in theory all be answered with a 5). The results indicate that the span of potential scores is covered relatively well, as the scores fluctuate between 6 (for networking) and 70 (for social benefits). We treat each sum of scores as ordinal. We justify this choice by using the test of parallel lines, which is based on different chi- square tests and assesses whether there are (undesirable) significant differences in the coefficients (Brant 1990). Table 2 shows the results of the test of parallel lines and reveals that all domains of perceived benefits have P-values (substantially) exceeding 0.05. This means that there are no significant differences in the coefficients, indicating that the distances between the ordinal scores can be considered the same, thereby justifying the treatment of the dependent variable as ordinal.
The (decomposed) perceived benefits, organisation, and certification are categorical (i.e., nominal). Therefore, we have used dummy codes as an input to the regression model. For organisation, the dummy code 0 refers to independent smallholders, and 1 to organised smallholders. For certification, a score of 0 represents the uncertified smallholders and 1 the certified smallholders. The strength of the influence of certification and organisation on perceived benefits is shown by an estimate (i.e., the regression coefficient) in the regression model, which needs to have a P-value of 0.05 or lower to be considered significant. The value of the estimate (positive or negative) reveals the direction of the influences of a predictor variable (either organisation or certification) on the perceived benefits. The interpretation of the estimate is that for a one-unit change in the predictor variable (moving from being unorganised towards being organised, or from being uncertified to certified), the benefits are expected to change by the value of its estimate. The higher the estimate, the stronger the variable’s contribution to the perceived benefits.
Different Organisations and Their Relation to Certification
Table 3 presents the organizational characteristics of farmer groups (FGs), KUBEs, and cooperatives. Here we see that the different organizations share some similarities (e.g., in their decision-making procedures). The cooperatives tend to be most distinctive, as they differ from the other types of organization in terms of administration and administrative sanctions, member participation in decision- making, leadership style, membership type, funding source, and legal status. The FGs differ from the other two in terms of their focus (on production only) and their orientation (inward oriented).
In practice, all certified farmers are members of an FG and either a KUBE or cooperative. In the case of FT certification, all farmers become member of an FG cooperative. The interviews revealed that an FG’s connection with a KUBE or cooperative—being mandatory for certification—improved the FG’s administration in terms of recording the quantity and prices of coffee sold to KUBEs/cooperatives. It also broadened their focus from production-only toward post-harvest and marketing activities, with the aim of delivering good quality beans as requested by the KUBEs/cooperatives. Some FG characteristics are not influenced by FG relations with KUBEs and cooperatives. For example, FGs maintain their methods for recruiting new members, obtaining funding, and making decisions. FGs are also still considered non-legal entities and cannot be confronted with legal sanctions for administrative failures.
For cooperatives and KUBEs, certification requires management practices involving administrative tasks, such as updating farmer profiles, tracking the quantity of coffee sold by every farmer to the organization, providing regular information on prices, and administering the price premium paid to farmers. Farmers have realised that they no longer need to depend on group leaders for information but can rely on ICS staff for information. Both certification and dual group membership expand the farmers’ base of information. In the next section, we elaborate on the perceived benefits of organisational membership and participation in different certification schemes.
The Influence of Organisations and Certification Schemes on Perceived Benefits
Table 4 shows the descriptive statistics of the mean scores for the perceived benefits in the five domains. If we compare the average scores with the maximum scores within each domain, we see that, in general, farmers perceive relatively high benefits in all domains (with an average score of 3.43 on a 5-point scale for all domains). Differences between domains are small and vary between average scores of 3.3 for perceived benefits in the domain of networking and 3.5 for benefits in the domain of representation and capacity building. We further see that certified farmers perceive higher benefits than uncertified farmers in all benefit domains. Similarly, organised farmers perceive higher benefits in all domains, compared with unorganised smallholders. Overall, in all domains certified farmers have higher average benefits than organised farmers. However, since the certified farmers in our survey are also organised, we cannot methodologically separate the effects of organisation and certification on perceived benefits.
Table 5 and 6 show the results of the t-test for certification and organisation respectively. Table 5 shows that the mean scores of certified and uncertified smallholders differ significantly (sig. 0.000) in all benefit domains. Certified farmers perceive significantly higher benefits than uncertified farmers. Table 6 reveals that the mean scores in all benefit domains are considerably higher for organised farmers than for unorganised smallholders (sig. 0.000), implying that the organised farmers perceive considerably higher benefits than the unorganised smallholders. If we compare the relative differences in mean scores as presented in tables 5 and 6, we see that farmers evolving from unorganised to organised are likely to perceive a more profound increase in benefits than farmers evolving from uncertified to certified, although the latter will also experience an increase in benefits. This result is probably influenced by the perception of uncertified, organised farmers (IFG farmers, n = 30) who feel the organisation (FG) provides benefits for them.
Furthermore, figure 1 and table 7 show differences in perceived benefits resulting from farmers’ participation in different certification schemes (ANOVA test). We found significant differences between the schemes, although we cannot identify clear patterns based on the schemes. In the economic domain, we see that 4C farmers perceive more benefits than FT and RA farmers, and considerably more benefits than the farmers participating in UTZ. In the social/ community domain, we see a reversed pattern in which UTZ farmers perceive more benefits than FT and 4C farmers, and considerably more than farmers participating in RA. In the third domain (representation and negotiation), participation in 4C again leads to the perception of greater benefits than in FT, UTZ, and especially RA. Although participation in RA is associated with a relatively low perception of benefits in the domain of representation and negotiation, it is also associated with a relatively high perception of benefits in the capacity-building domain. In this domain, farmers participating in RA score significantly higher than FT and 4C farmers, and considerably higher than farmers participating in UTZ. In the last domain, networking and/or partnership, we see that farmers participating in 4C perceive higher benefits than farmers who are part of FT, UTZ, or RA. Overall, we conclude that participation in 4C seems to lead to higher benefits in three domains (economic, representation and negotiation, and networking), whereas participation in UTZ and RA leads to higher benefits in the social community domain (UTZ) and in the domain of capacity building (RA). UTZ scores relatively low in terms of farmers’ perceived benefits in the domains of economy and capacity building, whereas RA scores rather low in the social, representation, and networking domains. Although there are significant differences in benefits between FT and other schemes (see table 7), FT never scores particularly well or badly in comparison with the other schemes. Based on these findings, we cannot accept hypothesis 1: farmers participating in the more demanding schemes (RA, UTZ, FT) perceive more benefits than farmers participating in a 4C scheme.
Next, we found that different types of organisational membership lead to differences in perceived benefits. Table 8 reveals that the members of FGKUBEs and FG cooperatives perceive significantly higher benefits in all domains than farmers who are only part of an IFG. For all benefit domains, the differences in perceived benefits are larger between the FG and the FG cooperative than between the FG and FGKUBE. We could not, however, identify any significant differences between the FG cooperative and FGKUBE. Therefore, we reject hypothesis 2: farmers participating in organisations with greater assets and/or capital perceive more benefits than farmers participating in organisations with fewer assets and/or less capital.
Table 9 presents the results of the ordinal logistic regression. The results reveal that both certification and organisation significantly influence all benefit domains. We can also see that the values of all estimates are positive, meaning that a one- unit increase in organisation (i.e., going from 0 = unorganised to 1 = organised) or certification (from 0 = uncertified to 1 = certified) leads to higher perceived benefit scores. Hypothesis 3 (certified and organised farmers perceive more benefits in all domains than uncertified or unorganised farmers) can therefore be confirmed. We acknowledge that the effects of organisation on perceived benefits mix with the effects of certification. These effects are more difficult to separate as certified farmers have dual organisational memberships, whereas uncertified farmers have no organisational memberships or only one. We do not suggest further analysing and comparing the strengths of the estimates, as they are counterfactual and influenced by each other. The influence of certification and organisation on benefits can therefore not be strictly separated.
Regarding the demographic variables, only family size significantly and positively influences the perceived benefit of capacity building (P value = 0.035) (see table 9). The value of the estimate tells us that the perceived benefit of capacity building is likely to increase by 0.229 after adding one person to a household. Although the effect can be considered relatively small, an increase in family members may enable people to share information and to learn from one another. Based on this, we conclude that capacity-building processes, at least partially, may take place inside a household.
Conclusion
Participation in organisation, as well as participation in certification, is often associated with benefits. However, both certification and organisation do not represent homogeneous entities and their manifestations are diverse. In the Indonesian smallholder coffee system, three different organisations play a role: cooperatives, KUBEs, and farmer groups. We can also distinguish different certification schemes in the coffee sector. This paper contributes to the literature on coffee certification and organisation by investigating the perceived benefits of farmers in five domains: economic, social and community, representation and negotiation, capacity building, and networking.
From our research, we observe that certification schemes seem to determine organisational structures that evolve in the coffee sector in particular regions. As observed in Aceh province, FT requires the first buyers to collect coffee directly from farmers, implement floor prices, give farmers a price premium, and give payment in advance/credit if the farmers ask for it. The buyers consequently need sufficient financial capital, and in this case it appears that only cooperatives are feasible for doing so. The other schemes (4C, RA, and UTZ) in Lampung do not emphasise FT-like requirements, allowing KUBEs to emerge as an alternative to cooperatives in the province. Comparing Arabica and Robusta, farmers producing the former typically use a wash processing method that requires more skill than farmers cultivating the latter with a dry processing method. Indonesian Arabica is commonly produced as specialty coffee with specific attributes (e.g., tastes and origins) that has further developed a niche market with relatively loyal consumers. This differs from Indonesian Robusta, which is typically produced with little qualitative differentiation from Robusta coffees in other countries, and subsequently the market prefers lower prices. As the price of Robusta (mostly produced in Lampung) is generally lower than that of Arabica (typically produced in Aceh), this may further explain why incentives for stakeholders to develop cooperatives in the Robusta region are also low.
Regarding the benefits of certification, our conclusion is twofold. First, we conclude that certified farmers perceive higher benefits than uncertified farmers in all five domains. Certification creates more market opportunities (economic and representation benefits) and provides training that improves the farmers’ skills and knowledge (capacity building). Training mostly takes place in a group, which may further strengthen the feeling of belonging to a community, contributing to a higher perception of social benefits, and benefits in the domain of networking. Second, we conclude that farmers participating in different certification schemes also perceive differences in benefits. Although we cannot distinguish clear patterns based on the certification schemes the farmers participate in, we can conclude that 4C—being known as one of the less strict schemes—scores relatively well in three benefit domains (economic, networking, and representation and negotiation). A plausible explanation is that, according to farmers and ICS staff, participation in 4C is less burdensome for the farmers in terms of compliance with the scheme’s requirements. This may result in a rather positive perception of benefits. It is also possible, however, that time alters perceived benefits, such that the benefits perceived by farmers who have participed in certification for more than five years (UTZ, FT, and RA) are lower than those of farmers who are relatively new to certification (4C).
Regarding the benefits of farmer organisations, our conclusion is also twofold. First, we conclude that organised farmers perceive higher benefits than unorganised smallholders. The existing farmer organisations seem to perform relatively well in bringing benefits to the farmers and thereby creating additional value for their members. The different types of organisations seem complementary, rather than overlapping or conflicting. FGs, for example, enhance farmers’ knowledge and skills regarding the technical aspects of coffee production, whereas KUBEs and cooperatives link farmers to certified coffee markets. FGs are more product-oriented and valued as a social organisation that strengthens communal relationships (among friends and neighbours). The unique value of a KUBE, which is more market-oriented, assists the FGs to comply with certification requirements and improve management. In contrast, cooperatives work with individual farmers and assist them on an individual or cluster basis. Given the value of each form of organisation, the question should deal not so much with the prioritisation of one farmer organisation over another, but rather with how to improve their respective strengths. Second, we conclude that organisational forms in which certified farmers participate (FG cooperatives and FGKUBEs) lead to higher perceived benefits than organisational forms in which uncertified farmers participate (IFGs). We can explain this through the KUBEs’ and cooperatives’ efforts to connect farmers to buyers (e.g., exporters or multinational companies), and through the opportunities they provide to meet and connect with farmers outside their own FGs. However, the benefits farmers perceive from participating in FG cooperatives and FGKUBEs do not significantly differ. Therefore, we conclude that organisational differences in (financial) assets and capital have no significant influence on farmers’ perceptions of benefits.
Indonesian coffee farmers in Lampung and Aceh generally perceive a substantive amount of benefits. We cannot distinguish large differences in benefits among the different domains; a positive feeling regarding benefit, in general, seems to translate into a balanced, positive feeling in all benefit domains. Empirical and objective measurement of actual benefits in the five domains may reveal different patterns, or may reveal that the benefits in each domain differ in intensity. However, independent from the actual benefits, the farmers perceive that they benefit from certification and organisation. We consider this information to be relevant in the policy domain, as it is the farmers’ perceptions that partially drives the decision to participate in a sustainability scheme or organisation, or to continue or terminate their membership.
This paper is relevant from an academic point of view as it contributes to the debate on the effects of sustainability standards and certification in the coffee sector. While some studies claim that certification effects are limited, our findings suggest that both certification and organisation (from a farmer perspective) lead to perceived benefits in five domains. However, focusing on perceived rather than actual benefits also implies that we must acknowledge that different farmer communities may vary in their interpretation of reality. Perceived benefits may differ among groups, even when the farmers are confronted with the same realities. We noted, for example, that cultural differences may influence the type of benefits that farmers value. In some farmer communities, wedding ceremonies, social gatherings (arisan), and communal work (gotong royong) are considered cultural cornerstones and are valued for strengthening social relationships. In other communities, however, these events are neither part of the culture nor considered to be important communal activities. Organisational support in arranging such ceremonies will therefore be valued differently by farmers in other communities.
Further reflecting on our research model, we realise that the Indonesian context has challenged our intention to strictly separate (and therefore compare) the different groups of farmers. For instance, this applies to the separation between certified and uncertified farmers, because many certified farmers continue their ‘traditional’ practices (e.g., selling on the side to local traders to obtain direct payments in cash). Certified and uncertified schemes are also less distinguishable in practice than on paper. Further, it is impossible to isolate the influence of organisation and certification on farmers’ benefits, as certified farmers are part of (dual) organisational structures, whereas uncertified farmers are not organised, or participate only in a single organisational membership. We acknowledge this as a limitation of our study and suggest that future studies should be designed to provide a matching of reliable control groups. This will distinguish the effects or benefits of participation in certification and organisation. Further, we have highlighted some differences in perceived benefits for farmers participating in different schemes. Here we must acknowledge that our sample may have been rather small. However—and following the earlier described connection between cultural similarities and similarities in perceived benefits—farmers joining organisations and certifications tend to live in the same or neighboring villages and have similar practices and cultures. This means that increasing our sample size by adding respondents from the same population is likely to lead to the same results. We are therefore confident that the results derived from our sample are reliable and reflect the general characteristics of the respective populations. However, as schemes continue to expand their regional scope, increasing the sample size by including coffee farmers in regions that were not covered in this study may lead to a more complete understanding of farmers’ perceived benefits.
Another point of critique may be that it is logical that farmers participating in an organization or certification scheme would perceive benefits. Otherwise, the farmer would have already left the organization or certification scheme. Even if we ignore the fact that Indonesian smallholders tend not to withdraw from memberships easily, this reasoning would tell only part of the story. This paper not only adds information on the types of benefits perceived but also contributes to knowledge on the differences in perceived benefits resulting from different organizational memberships and certification schemes.
Finally, we reflect on the potential role of certification and organization in contributing to a more sustainable coffee production. Our research shows that efforts to better organize farmers may, from a farmers’ benefits point of view, be equally effective as attempts to involve more farmers in certification. The implication is that improvement of farmer organisations should not only be viewed as part of the certification process but also as a direct means to achieve more sustainable coffee production. What could also be improved is the inclusion of farmers in organisations, particularly in remote areas where thousands of farmers are not yet part of any form of organisation. In some areas, farmers have access to FGs, but participation in KUBEs or cooperatives (and therefore also in certification) remains practically impossible. Farmers in these (remote) areas therefore miss out on opportunities to improve their situation in relation to the five benefit domains. Establishing farmer organisations is not an easy task, because FGs, KUBEs, and cooperatives need to be acknowledged by different ministries within the government, and a dual organisational membership is required for farmers who want to become certified. The Ministry of Agriculture can take the lead in developing FGs, but to establish KUBEs and cooperatives, the ministry needs to collaborate with the Ministry of Social Affairs and the Ministry of Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprise. New KUBEs and cooperatives can be established, for example, by supporting prospective members (farmers) and providing them with managerial training and assistance to collect initial capital and attract investors.
Notes
1 A micro-business is defined in Law 20/2008 as a business owned by an individual or a group with assets up to Rp 50 million (less than $4,000) in total.
2 ICS staff are hired by cooperatives and KUBEs to work as private extension officers to help farmers (mostly by trainings) to comply with the certification requirements.
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Capitalism Doesn’t Care about Women, but It Does Liberate Them
“Your capitalistic attitude to women,” said the Soviet premier, “does not occur under communism.”
Capitalism didn’t create the sexual division of labor; it began the process of eliminating it.
Nikita Khrushchev was addressing Vice President Richard Nixon during the opening day of 1959’s American National Exhibition in Moscow. Nixon was there to represent not just the US government but also General Mills, Whirlpool, and General Electric — to represent, in other words, what both men understood as the essence of capitalism.
What provoked Khrushchev’s rebuke?
“In America,” Nixon had announced while spokesmodels showed off the latest kitchen conveniences, “we like to make life easier for women.”
According to Bee Wilson, who tells the story of what came to be known as the Kitchen Debates in her book Consider the Fork, the top communist was “implying that instead of making life easier, these machines only confirmed the American view that the vocation of women was to be housewives.”
“And perhaps,” Wilson adds parenthetically, “he was partly right about this.”
East Meets West
There’s something compelling about the story of the Kitchen Debates. Instead of the abstractions of economics and ethics, of power struggle and political theory, we have two men embodying East and West, communism and capitalism in the mid-20th century. In “How Ice Cream Won the Cold War” (Freeman, fall 2015), I used the event to explore the importance of luxury to economic development. But there’s more than one thing profoundly misleading about employing this scene to encapsulate the clash of these two economic systems.
For one thing, while there may be some justice in calling on Khrushchev to personify communism, there’s something terribly wrong with letting Nixon represent free enterprise.
Nixon was never procapitalism. He was anticommunism. He made his reputation ferreting out communist infiltrators in government. When he later held the top spot in the White House, Nixon increased federal regulation of industry, killed off the last vestige of the gold standard, and imposed wage and price controls on an already ailing economy. In his foreign policy, President Nixon supported petty dictators throughout the world who were anything but friendly to freedom in the marketplace — just as long as they, too, opposed the red menace that Khrushchev had spoken for.
The system that Nixon subscribed to throughout his political career had more in common with Mussolini’s corporatism than it did with Adam Smith’s invisible hand.
Who Speaks for Free Enterprise?
But there’s a more fundamental problem. Even if Nixon had been a genuine free-marketer, the economic system of competitive commerce cannot have a spokesman. Communism is fundamentally centralized, whether it is directed by a small central committee or a single leader. Capitalism, in contrast, is radically decentralized. No committee can guide a healthy economy. No single person can run the show. And the more anyone tries to do so, the less the economic system can be described as capitalistic.
When Nixon told Khrushchev, “We like to make life easier for women,” he was implying that the latest kitchen conveniences were the result of benevolence, as if successful entrepreneurs — or worse, politicians — were directing the market’s resources toward a particular social goal: greater leisure for American housewives. And when Khrushchev replied by accusing capitalism of a sexist agenda, he was indulging in the same fallacy: the idea that capitalism is driven by capitalists.
It doesn’t matter if businessmen are benevolent or patronizing, progressive or reactionary; in a free and competitive economy, the successful entrepreneur maximizes profits through mutually beneficial exchange — anticipating the products and services that customers will be most willing to pay for.
Economist John C. Goodman, writing in a different context, puts it well:
The marketplace uniquely melds altruism and self-interest. Take Bill Gates, the man who pioneered the personal computer revolution. By empowering computer users everywhere, he became the world’s richest man; and now he is giving all his wealth away. Was he motivated by selfishness? Or was he altruistically trying to create the greatest good for the greatest number? The beauty of the marketplace is that Gates’ motivation doesn’t matter. You get pretty much the same result either way. (Independent.org, “Capitalism, Socialism, and the Pope”)
Liberating Women
And yet, Nixon wasn’t entirely wrong. Capitalism did make life easier for women. It made life easier for men, too, but as historian Stephen Davies has pointed out, “women have particular cause to be thankful above and beyond the gains in material well-being that they share with men.”
The more individualist traditions of feminism embraced capitalism.
This was true even before the advent of the consumer technology Nixon was showing off in Moscow. After the Industrial Revolution, Davies writes, for the first time,
women could earn an independent income and support themselves, something that was practically (as well as legally) difficult in traditional society. This meant that not being married, but rather being independent, was no longer an utter disaster nor tantamount to a death sentence.
For those who did marry, he continues,
modern capitalism produced a suite of devices and innovations that physically freed women from the demands and limitations of domestic labor. To take one example, the modern washing machine freed women from the need to spend one or often two entire days of each week doing laundry. Other domestic appliances had similar effects. (“The Force That Liberated Women,” FEE.org)
From our perspective in the 21st century, we can question the assumption that laundry should be women’s work, but capitalism didn’t create the sexual division of labor; it began the process of eliminating it.
It did so first by making labor less onerous, then by making independence a more realistic option, and finally by creating a world in which individuals can afford to reject the burdens of tradition — and to attempt to persuade others to join them in that rejection. If feminism is about women’s liberation from millennia of oppression, then capitalism is the sponsor, not the enemy, of feminism.
This is why, Davies claims, almost all of the earliest feminists “were ardent laissez-faire liberals and supporters of capitalist industry. They were well aware of the connection between the autonomy and freedom of choice that they advocated for women and the economic transformations that had made freedom possible as a lived reality.”
Pity the Poor Housewife
Khrushchev implied that the modern housewife was a creation of capitalism — and he was right. He further implied that the prevalence of housewives in 1950s America was a blot on the market system, and many Western women since the 1960s have been inclined to agree.
The reputation of housewives may never recover from a book published a few years after the Kitchen Debates: Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, in which Friedan spoke of “the problem that has no name.”
“Simply stated,” writes libertarian feminist Wendy McElroy, Friedan believed that
domesticity denied housewives their humanity and potential, making them suffer both physically and mentally. Friedan described the typical ‘50s family as a “comfortable concentration camp.” Like camp inmates, suburban housewives had adjusted psychologically and become “dependent, passive, childlike” and lived at a “lower human level.” (“Individualist Feminism: The Lost Tradition,” FEE.org)
The advent of the modern housewife was the result of greater wealth and leisure, as was women’s growing freedom to accept or reject the role.
After The Feminine Mystique became a cornerstone of second wave feminism, Friedan, who cofounded the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966, downplayed her previous political activism: she “had been a staunch political activist on the communist left for decades,” according to McElroy, and probably didn’t want the movement then known as “women’s liberation” to be associated in the popular imagination with radical socialism. But that connection was not unfounded.
Down with the Capitalist Patriarchy
As Davies and McElroy point out, the more individualist traditions of feminism embraced capitalism. And yet, the mainstream of modern feminism has borrowed significantly from socialist theory.
In the 19th century, McElroy writes, “the two basic traditions of feminism that fundamentally questioned the political system were socialist feminism, from which contemporary radical feminism draws, and individualist feminism, which is sometimes called libertarian feminism.”
The language of the two traditions can seem similar, employing the same words and naming the same goals, but “the key concepts of feminism within individualism — such as equality, justice, and class — bear so little relation to the concepts as used by socialists that the definitions often conflict.” For example, the socialist “approach to justice is ends-oriented and defined in terms of a specific social condition,” including economic equality.
When Nixon acknowledged that kitchen conveniences were of greater immediate benefit to women than men, that distinction was, from the socialist perspective, not just an acceptance of differences between contemporary American men and women; it was an acceptance of inequality in the socialist sense of injustice.
In contrast, libertarian feminists consider justice to be the absence of coercion. “Whatever is voluntary is ‘just,’” McElroy summarizes, “or, at least, it is as close to justice as non-utopia can come.”
To the extent, then, that women have legitimate options other than being housewives, the choice to stay home and manage the household is the product of both liberty and justice.
Making Change
We might argue that a combination of laws and culture limited women’s options in the 1950s, that the prevalence of housewives did represent an injustice because it resulted from women’s lack of true freedom. As we’ve already noted in the case of Nixon, the people in charge of American government were not champions of individual liberty. They had a particular vision of how things should work, and they used the coercive authority of the state to try to make it so.
But it was capitalism that undermined their vision. Nixon welcomed the latest appliances’ making life easier for American women, but those dishwashers and fancy refrigerators were having a less obvious longer-term effect: by reducing the burden of domestic labor, they opened a world of options that the men in power may not have been as happy about.
Leisure isn’t just the absence of labor; it is the freedom to seek more rewarding work.
“It is undeniably true,” McElroy writes, “that The Feminine Mystique spoke to many women whose lives were changed as a result of reading the book. For them, being a housewife was a negation of their potential as human beings, and they discovered the courage to reach out to make a different choice.” But whether those women understood it or not, it was the wealth of the market economy that enabled them to resist tradition and explore other careers — even when the larger culture may not yet have condoned their doing so.
Capitalism, in other words, is not the same thing as Western culture. To equate them is to miss the ongoing struggle between the two. The market undermines traditions by testing their value against more fluid social arrangements. Those customs that depend on a particular historical condition will lose out, because, as the economy grows, the rules change.
Capitalism is not the resistance to such changes. It is their catalyst.
Profit and Progress
The era of the suburban housewife marked a transition in Western history. Women had always been responsible for managing their homes. That was true throughout the world and across political and economic systems. The advent of the modern housewife was the result of greater wealth and leisure, as was women’s growing freedom to accept or reject the role, well before the 1950s.
Leisure isn’t just the absence of labor; it is the freedom to seek more rewarding work.
Khrushchev portrayed Nixon as the cultural reactionary, “and perhaps,” as Wilson comments, “he was partly right about this.”
Maybe the American politician was condescending toward women. So, too, may have been the individual capitalists whose products were on display at Nixon’s exhibition. But the economic system that produced those goods functions with or without regressive attitudes, and by 1959, it had produced an unprecedented level of wealth and freedom for everyone — women in particular.
If we can look back, over half a century later, and take exception to the fine points of what was then presented as progress, that’s only because commerce and enterprise continue to afford us — men and women, both — ever more options to pursue our own liberation.
Equality, Justice and Other Nonsense
There are different conceptions of “equality”, and “justice”, but only some of these conceptions are commensurate with the institutions of individual liberty, private property, consensual contractualism and personal accountability. This essay argues that classical-liberal thinkers like Adam Smith and John Locke offered superior conceptions of equality and justice than much of the contemporary discourse does. This essay claims that the contemporary use of equality and justice is nonsensical; whereby nonsense is the absence of meaningful denotation and the intentional hiding of subjective normativity.
Sound and Fury
“I have found that words that are loaded with pathos and create a seductive euphoria are most apt to promote nonsense” – The German novelist Günter Grass was not referring neither to equality nor justice in this interview to Der Spiegel on August 20th, 2010. But the warning stands. In the contemporary discourse, both concepts are loaded with pathos. Agents of different persuasion use the seductive euphoria of these terms to promote nonsense, or even worse.
Thomas Piketty, in his 2014 Capital in the Twenty-First Century, is one example. He studies wealth and income inequality in Europe and the US since the 18th century. Piketty claims that inequality is not an accident but rather a feature of capitalism that can be reversed only through state intervention. And further, unless capitalism is reformed, the very democratic order will be threatened. The recipe for capitalism’s reform is a global tax on wealth.
There have been many criticisms of Piketty (2014) for reasons of methodology and his treatment of data, which is rather generous to himself (Sutch 2017, Acemoglu & Robinson 2015). Carlos Góes, an economist with the International Monetary Fund, did not find any empirical confirmation of Piketty’s (2014) central empirical thesis. According to him, when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g), over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth. in fact, Góes even identified an opposite trend in 75% of the countries that he studied (Goes 2016).
Nonsense is, in the meaning of this essay, the absence of meaningful denotation and the intentional hiding of subjective normativity. Piketty, in reducing all economic issues to one and not defining his independent variable (capital), puts himself outside the factual, or academic, discourse.
But the most problematic failure of Piketty’s work occurs on a conceptual level. He reduces all economic problems of the past 200 years to inequality. He makes readers think that nothing else matters. Furthermore, he does not define some of his most important concepts, such as capital. Not even the conception of inequality is duly explored: Piketty seems to reduce it to a comparison of results, namely the stocks of (some) capital held by different people. Finally, he does not explore different solutions and their possible impacts on capital itself, its allocation, or distribution. He only suggests one remedy and does not even offer an economic explanation for why or how the tax on wealth reforms capitalism or strengthens the democratic order. Piketty (2014) does also not discuss the impacts of such a tax on private property, contractualism, liberty, and on productivity. To his defense: he does not need to address these issues, because he disregards them. For him, only inequality matters – the rest does not.
Piketty is an example for the nonsensical use of a concept – in this case, equality. Nonsense is, in the meaning of this essay, the absence of meaningful denotation and the intentional hiding of subjective normativity. Piketty, in reducing all economic issues to one and not defining his independent variable (capital), puts himself outside the factual, or academic, discourse. If a model cannot be assessed by a third-party observer and if data can neither be replicated, proven false, nor made plausible, then an argument cannot be convincing by its validity, but only, if anything, by its normativity. Similarly, when Piketty (2014) proposes a wealth-tax without even examining its consequences or alternatives, it becomes clear that his work reflects a personal normative agenda. He uses the concept of equality to hide his normative intentions and to give academic pedigree to his argument.
A similar discourse occurs regarding justice, or its absence. For example, Buchanan & Mathieu (1986) said that “justice is usually said to exist when a person receives that to which he or she is entitled, namely, exactly those benefits and burdens that are due the individual because of his or her particular characteristics and circumstances”. John Rawls’ (1971) theory is that justice is fairness and fairness can be achieved by redistribution. But Rawls is not a crude redistributionist. He echoes Ricardo when he bases his Theory of Justice on two principles. First Principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all. Second Principle: Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both: (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.
However: What is suspicious of being result-oriented thinking in Rawls’ (1971) case, is clearly normative in Buchanan & Mathieu (1986). Neither seems interested in justice, per se, but in policy-prescription. They hide personal normative agendas behind the concept of justice; they create the impression of their own idea of justice as an objective one. And they rely on the moral intuition attached to that term as well as on its apparent objectivity to legitimize the policies they advocate. In both cases, policies are being suggested without alternatives being evaluated and without the consequences of such policies being studied – at least not the consequences for the individual. Note also that both policy prescriptions heavily rely on institutions – as bureaucratic entities with regulators privileged over the individual – administering these policies. At the same time, neither reviews how institutions in their organizational sense and their structures of incentives and power might contribute in making situations unjust.
Nonsensical Discourse
When this essay claims justice and equality to be nonsense, it understands much of the contemporary discourse about it as nonsensical. Instead of evaluating the conceptions of equality or justice, result-oriented thinking and masked normativity guide the contemporary use of these terms. This might be intellectually dishonest, but it is especially perilous to the institutions – in the sense of the rules of grammar of social interaction – that protect and empower the individual: individual liberty, private property, consensual contractualism, and personal accountability.
The interesting turn of events is that classical liberalism was at the vanguard of the advocacy for equality and justice in the 18th and 19th centuries. Both concepts are central to thinkers such as John Lock, David Hume, or Adam Smith. What happened? Why were these concepts, if anything, valid then, and are invalid, nonsensical, or even destructive now?
They hide personal normative agendas behind the concept of justice; they create the impression of their own idea of justice as an objective one. And they rely on the moral intuition attached to that term as well as on its apparent objectivity to legitimize the policies they advocate.
The problem is not the concept, but the conception, i.e. the set of ideas standing behind the terms. In the past 50 years, the framework of reference for both changed radically. These concepts were appropriated by a specific political normativity. Uncovering the change helps to understand why most contemporary talk about equality and justice is nonsensical in the understanding of this paper. But it also points at how to make sense of them. Looking back at the ideas of classic liberal thinkers proposes meaningful alternatives to understanding and using justice and equality – without result-oriented thinking, hidden normativity, and political appropriation.
McIntyre (1988) cautions that:
An analysis of the concepts of justice and rationality contends that unresolved fundamental conflicts exist in our society about what justice requires, because basic disagreement exists regarding what the rational justification is for acting one way rather than another. […] Thus, no such thing exists as a rationality that is not the rationality of some tradition. Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and Hume are four major philosophers who represent rival traditions of inquiry. Each tradition developed within a particular historical context and sought to resolve particular conflicts. Allegiance to one tradition can allow for meaningful contact with other traditions in a way that can lead to understanding, vindication, or revision of that tradition in its continuing form. Thus, only by being grounded in the history of our own and opposing traditions will we be able to restore rationality and intelligibility to our moral attitudes and commitments today.
Going back to the conceptions of justice and equality of classical liberalism is an exercise to enrich and make contemporary discourse better. It offers an alternative view that is neither result-oriented nor particularistic. It is based on liberty, private property, and voluntarism, as well as and guided by the principle of proportionality – which can be summarized by the folksy-ism: “You must not use a steam hammer to crack a nut, if a nutcracker would do (for the reference, see common law case R v Goldstein [1983] 1 WLR 151, 155).”
On Justice
Defining justice is a difficult task. Theories of justice are abundant. It seems that conceptions of justice are bound by culture, historicity, and most importantly, ethical preferences. While some define justice as the pre-established harmony of a society (Plato, Aristotle), others understand it as the product of Divine Command (Bible) or of Nature (Ancient China) or of Natural Law (Scholastics). Yet others take justice to be a human creation, for example either through despotism (Chinese Legalism) or mutual agreement (Rousseau). Then, there are conceptions in which justice only plays the role of a subordinate value, for example in Mill’s utilitarianism. There, justice is just the by-product of social utility-maximization (Fay 1996).
Theories of justice usually focus on distributive, retributive, and pragmatic issues:
- Theories of distributive justice need to answer three questions:
- What goods are to be distributed – e.g. wealth, power, opportunities, etc.?
- Between what entities are they to be distributed – e.g. present people, future people, past people, sentient beings, members of groups, objects, etc.?
- What is the proper distribution – e.g. equal by input, equal by output, equal by process, meritocratic, by property, by status, by need, or can justice even be distributed?
Typical issues in distributive justice are social justice, fairness, property rights, and welfare-maximization. Generally, distributive justice theorists do not answer the question of who has the right to enforce a favored distribution. On the other hand, theories of distributive justice do not necessarily favor a type of distribution. Rather, many of them merely observe and describe distribution patterns according to some conceptions of justice. Other yet observe how distribution changes, as individuals interact. There is also a subset of this group of theories, focusing on the re-distribution of justice. This subset asks how to remedy unjust distributions. This group of theories first tries to identify what an unjust distribution is and then resort to institutions of redistribution – as organizations and/or as grammars of social interaction – tasked with redistribution.
- Theories of retributive justice are concerned with punishment for wrongdoing, and need to answer three questions:
- Why punish?
- Who should be punished?
- What punishment should wrongdoers receive?
Utilitarian theories look at the future consequences of punishment. Some often claim that strict punishment is just because it brings disincentives to wrongdoing. Others claim that lenient punishment is just because it reinforces inclusive social values. Then, there are retributive theories that look back to particular acts of wrongdoing, and attempt to balance them with deserved punishment. Some theories belonging to the redistributionist subgroup attempt arguing for redistribution based on retributive justice, i.e. if a good is unjustly distributed, the unjust distribution is a wrongdoing which must be retributed by redistribution.
- Pragmatic theories of justice are concerned with the application of justice.
For example, which institutions guarantee justice, who is in charge of observing what is unjust, what is the relationship between justice and law, or, which theories of sentencing are there? Pragmatic theories of justice are also interested in the evolution of the conception of justice.
The Complexity of Justice
The uses of the word “justice” criticized in this essay as well as the classic liberal theories discussed in its remainder belong to the first group, distributive justice. Note, again, that this does not by necessity entail a normative desideratum of how justice ought to be distributed – let alone a distribution of justice by organizations of distribution. It merely treats justice as a good and asks how this good is factually encountered or exchanged in a community or society. John Locke (1632 – 1704) claiming justice to be a propriety of the natural rights of humans and Buchanan & Mathieu postulating justice as an entitlement belong both to the group of distributive justice, even if they want justice to do different things.
The problem is not the concept, but the conception, i.e. the set of ideas standing behind the terms. In the past 50 years, the framework of reference for both changed radically. These concepts were appropriated by a specific political normativity.
Note furthermore that all conceptions of justice are based upon assumptions. Some assumptions seem relatively easy to accept, for example the existence of things, the reality of human behavior, or the group-orientation of this behavior. However, many other assumptions prove much more difficult to defend, for example, objective social desiderata, transitive valuation of desiderata and utility, context-independence of justice, or social independence of justice. The problem with most of the difficult and with some of the easy assumptions is that they fail at the individual. They fail to conceptualize justice as something that underlies subjective valuation. While most distributive theories of justice accept that justice is a good, not all of them do conceive this good as something that could have different values depending on its scarcity, context, or the preferences of the individuals involved in the distribution of the good. Instead, most theories of distributive justice imagine justice as a context-independent objective value – a value that can be asserted either by the community, by the society, by experts, or by organizations (Primeaux et al 2003, Sandel 1998).
What does justice being a matter of individual and subjective valuation mean? Firstly, it entails that justice is dependent on the individuals involved in the distribution and exchange of justice. Secondly, it says that the value judgement of those involved will vary from individual to individual, but also from context to context.
For example, Aðaldís is the owner of a bakery in Northern Iceland; without explaining or advertising for it, she lets everyone, customer or not, use the bakery’s toilet. Regina is a first-time customer. She wants to use the washroom but thinks it improper to do so without consuming, so she orders a cup of coffee. Ada is not a customer either; she enters the bakery and uses the toilet without buying anything. If there is no further exchange between them, everyone seems to accept the situation – tacitly – as just.
But imagine a different context: here Regina complains that she feels treated badly, because, to use the washrooms, she felt compelled at buying coffee. Also, Aðaldís might feel unjustly treated by Ada. And if any of them signal their feelings to Ada, even Ada might judge having been treated unjustly, because there were no signs of the obligation to consume in order to use the toilet prior to its use; or she might feel entitled to using the washroom and perceives therefore any attempt of preventing her from doing so as unjust. In this example, however, the three have possibilities of dealing with their individual judgements of justice. These possibilities entail exchange; for example, the exchange of money, the exchange of information, and the exchange of rules.
As far as the first is concerned, Aðaldís could set a fee for using the toilet. In the second case, she could put up a sign telling the rules of washroom-use. If she does not, she thinks that non-customers using the toilet is just, or she is just indifferent to it. But Ada and Regina alike could engage in the exchange of money and information. Ada could try to reason with either Aðaldís and / or Regina. If either makes a case and the others accept it, who is to say that the solution is unjust? In any case, there are different ways of dealing with the situation and the different, maybe divergent judgements of what is unjust. But what if no conclusion is reached? What if Ada, for example, still feels treated unjustly? What if Aðaldís wants to treat Ada and Regina differently, which leads Regina to feel unjustly treated?
While the appreciation of justice is dependent on context and individual valuation, the remedies against its distributions that are perceived as unjust are not. There are institutions – grammars of social interactions – that at the same time enable different valuations of justice and ward off incursions into an individual’s valuation, if that individual has an ultimately legitimate claim to ward off the incursion. The individual with the legitimate claim in the sense of the grammar of social interactions will be better equipped to implement its valuation of justice, trumping others while doing so.
While some define justice as the pre-established harmony of a society (Plato, Aristotle), others understand it as the product of Divine Command (Bible) or of Nature (Ancient China) or of Natural Law (Scholastics). Yet others take justice to be a human creation, for example either through despotism (Chinese Legalism) or mutual agreement (Rousseau). Then, there are conceptions in which justice only plays the role of a subordinate value, for example in Mill’s utilitarianism. There, justice is just the by-product of social utility-maximization.
In the example above: Aðaldís could resort to her property rights to impose her view on justice. It could either be letting everyone use the toilet or not, charging for the use of the washroom or not, differentiating between who can use, or even banning Regina from the bakery for complaining. Because of Aðaldís’ legitimate claim to private property, one of the main aspects of the grammar for social interaction, her subjective valuation of justice can prevail, albeit only in the context of her bakery. This does not mean that the other two individuals will accept Aðaldís’ decision as just. Perhaps they will do so; but due to the context they at least have to accept the hostess’ legitimate claim to the grammar of social interaction. Despite their individual valuation of the situation, they can react to the prevailing view, for example by seeking other bakeries or by turning into regulars. Finally, as context changes, valuations change. Maybe a massive inflow of tourists leads the baker to reconsider her position.
This example shows that the ensemble of individual valuation, discourse, exchange and claims basing on the grammar of social interaction makes the situation justice-apt. The valuation of justice is subjective, but the exchange of it is intersubjective. While the valuation is context dependent, the exchange relies on the grammar of social interaction, which, in turns, takes the context into account.
Virtues and Justice
Justice being a subjectively valued good does not entail absolute relativism, as far as classical liberalism is concerned. Instead of focusing on inputs, processes, and outputs – these being all a matter for subjective valuation and intersubjective transactionalism –, classical liberalism pivots on the moral character of the individual. After all, it is the individual that seeks justice and therefore wants to act justly, at least in a given context. Most importantly, this vision of justice captures an important intuition and institution: (Some) Individuals just want to do the “right thing”. The “right thing” depends on the individual’s circumstances, possibilities, and judgement. Since it will be the individual’s character guiding the person through these situations, according to many conceptions of classical liberalism, justice is a subjectively valued good but also a virtue of the individual.
There is no confusion in the double use of the same term. While justice, as a good, is the result of a context-sensitive subjective valuation by the individual, that individual can make that judgement on the basis of the virtue of justice. It is the strength of an individual’s character that allows for the subjective valuation of the justice of a given situation.
Virtues are the traits or strengths of character of individuals. (Vices, on the other hand, are the weaknesses of character). A virtue is a disposition, well entrenched in its possessor – something that “goes all the way down”, unlike a habit – to notice, expect, value, feel, desire, choose, act, and react in certain characteristic ways. To possess a virtue is to be a certain sort of person with a certain complex mindset. Possessing a virtue is a matter of degree. To possess such a disposition fully is to possess full or perfect virtue, which is rare, and there are several ways of falling short of this ideal. Most people who can be described as virtuous, and certainly markedly better than those who can truly be described as dishonest, self-centered and greedy, still have their blind spots – little areas where they do not act for the reasons one would expect. So, someone honest or kind in most situations, and notably so in demanding ones, may nevertheless be trivially tainted by snobbery, inclined to be disingenuous about their forebears and less than kind to strangers with the wrong accent.
Practical wisdom goes hand in hand with virtue. It is the individual’s capability of recognizing the context in which to act and which virtue to privilege. Generally, given that good intentions are intentions to act well or “do the right thing”, practical wisdom is the knowledge or understanding that enables its possessor to do just that, in a (or any) given situation (for a more complete discussion of virtue ethics, virtues, and practical wisdom, refer to Snow (2010) and (2015)).
Justice was already considered a virtue by Adam Smith (1723 – 1790). The author of The Wealth of Nations as well as The Theory of Moral Sentiments can be read as a virtue-ethicist (see Schneider (2018, forthcoming), McCloskey (2006), and Griswold (1999)). In fact, in both books and in the collection of essays and lectures later named The Theory of Jurisprudence, Smith stresses five virtues, which he understands as strengths of character: love, courage, temperance, justice, and self-interested prudence (which are different from the medieval set, the Cardinal and the Christian virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude or Courage, Temperance, and Faith, Hope, Love).
In Smith’s work, justice is not a social desideratum neither is it an objective outcome. It is the capability of the individual to “do the right thing” in each context and under particular constraints. In fact, whether someone acts justly, or not, is something that can only be assessed in terms of introspection and of inter-subjective scrutiny. For Smith, there is no distribution, institution, institute, process, or outcome that is just or leads to justice (as an abstract term or theory). Justice is the strength of character of the individual and it is the individual that acts justly in given situations. Smith contends that there is a long-termed convergence of the individuals’ abstract notion of justice in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). There, his theory of the impartial observer asserts some form of ethical convergence of virtues. But as the application of virtue to a specific circumstance is, as the observer is, too, a matter for the individual, there is only the long-term convergence because of actions by the individuals.
Adam Smith on Justice
In The Wealth of Nations, Smith defines natural liberty using justice (1776, 311):
“Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man”.
A not careful reading could suggest, here, that Smith is thinking about a justice rulebook. But in other passages of The Wealth of Nations, he makes it clear that justice is an infinite set of permissible actions that depend only on the agent. It does not mean that the induvial is free to do anything and rationalize actions as just. But it means that it is the individual that judges which virtue to apply, and how to apply it. It is the individual that values justice in a specific context and given the different courses of action to take. Justice, for Smith, is also the individual’s commitment to the negative of his proposition on injustice, which states that improperly motivated (that is, intentionally) hurtful actions alone deserve punishment because they are the objects of a widely shared sense of resentment.
By the way, The Wealth of Nations reserves a whole book to jurisprudence – which Adam Smith confusingly calls justice, or the administration of justice – in which the improperly motivated actions are treated. In this book, he makes it clear, again, that despite the individual valuation of justice – or the failure in doing so – there are instruments like the grammar of social exchanges, that lie outside the scope of virtue to give way to a person’s legitimate claims, especially private property.
Smith sees society as seeking human socio-economic betterment through the control of actions that common experience leads to judge as hurtful rather than through collective actions designed to achieve future conjectured benefits. The latter is uncertain and fraught with unintended consequences; moreover, to his appreciation, history is full of examples of grandiose failures in the name of objective desiderata disguised as justice. The former relies on natural impulses for individuals and assemblies to pursue betterment, risking only their own resources; this framework led him to oppose slavery, colonialism, empire, mercantilism, and taxation without representation at a time when such views were unpopular.
In Smith’s work, justice is not a social desideratum neither is it an objective outcome. It is the capability of the individual to “do the right thing” in each context and under particular constraints.
Also – and as every virtue-ethicist – in Smith’s thought, the individual never acts on one virtue alone. The virtuous individual knows how to combine all the strengths of character to address the specific situation. Smith’s analogy of writing, and his use of it to contrast justice with the rest of the virtues, is one of the most important parts of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. He considers how precision and vagueness, clear rules and ambiguous ideals, both have important roles to play in moral judgment (1759, 3, VI,11):
The rules of justice may be compared to the rules of grammar; the rules of the other virtues, to the rules which critics lay down for the attainment of what is sublime and elegant in composition. The one, are precise, accurate, and indispensable. The other, are loose, vague, and indeterminate, and present us rather with a general idea of the perfection we ought to aim at, than afford us any certain and infallible directions for acquiring it. A man may learn to write grammatically by rule, with the most absolute infallibility; and so, perhaps, he may be taught to act justly. But there are no rules whose observance will infallibly lead us to the attainment of elegance or sublimity in writing; though there are some which may help us, in some measure, to correct and ascertain the vague ideas which we might otherwise have entertained of those perfections. And there are no rules by the knowledge of which we can infallibly be taught to act upon all occasions with prudence, with just magnanimity, or proper beneficence: though there are some which may enable us to correct and ascertain, in several respects, the imperfect ideas which we might otherwise have entertained of those virtues.
Adam Smith’s and the classic-liberal approach to justice is in many ways less problematic than the contemporary discourse. It is less bound by unrealistic assumptions such as an ultimate objectivity of justice, or the organizational administration of the redistribution of justice. Considering justice as a good underlying subjective valuation and as a strength of character of the agent captures important notions of how individuals act without prejudging outcomes. On the other hand, it burdens individuals with responsibility. If justice is a strength of character, every individual becomes challenged by the own idea of justice in action and is therefore held accountable in every single action. In this view, justice cannot be outsourced to society, to organizations, or to government; justice is an immediate value and motivator of the individual in action.
On Equality
This second term employed with seductive euphoria in the contemporary discourse is no less of a problem than the first. Equality, too, underwent some changes in its meaning over time. While it long ago meant equal obligation to follow the social desiderata pre-determined by nature and unveiled by the Logos (Ancient Greece), it was also understood as an isonomy of power relations among chieftains (Scotland, Iceland), clans (Mongols), aristocrats (most European monarchies and city-states) or as an equal subordination under a monarch (Qin and Tang China). Equality could furthermore be understood as an equitable value of human life (Hebrew Bible) (Siedentop 2014).
At the latest in 16th century Europe, the idea that all people – at least all men – were created equal and therefore had equal claims to political rights became widespread. There was, however, considerable discussion about the implication of the claim. One of the most intrepid theorists of equality was the classical liberal John Locke. To his mind, equality is a property of the human being and the basis of the individual’s political and judiical rights – and namely it is not an adjective to outcomes, disparities, or processes (Waldron 2002).
Justice burdens individuals with responsibility. If justice is a strength of character, every individual becomes challenged by the own idea of justice in action and is therefore held accountable in every single action. In this view, justice cannot be outsourced to society, to organizations, or to government; justice is an immediate value and motivator of the individual in action.
Locke sponsors equality on the grounds that all people are created equal and therefore share the same liberty. As fellows in liberty, people should treat each other as equally free – namely not as subjects, subordinates, unfree, or slaves. As the basic condition of human life, equality enables people to deal with themselves and each other on a “level playing field”. It specially enables them to engage in the exchange of views and goods. This exchange being freely guided by valuations and merits and not by the supposed entitlements of a few in function of their birthright or state. In short, equality in Locke is a basic condition of life; all individuals have the same liberty, and property over themselves – this is equality. Locke’s problem is, then, how to maintain this absolute and equal liberty of the individual in a society? He solves his problem by examining the creation of society.
Locke begins with a thought experiment stipulating pure equality and liberty of all people in a “state of nature”. Equality, in his sense of the term, means that all people have equal individual liberties. It does not mean equal resources, or equal outcomes; it does not even mean that all have the same initial opportunities; it just means that all are equally free. Locke is quite outspoken about equality not being the absence of inequality of outcomes:
Though I have said above, Chap. II. that all men by nature are equal, I cannot be supposed to understand all sorts of equality: age or virtue may give men a just precedency: excellency of parts and merit may place others above the common level: birth may subject some, and alliance or benefits others, to pay an observance to those to whom nature, gratitude, or other respects, may have made it due: and yet all this consists with the equality, which all men are in, in respect of jurisdiction or dominion one over another; which was the equality I there spoke of, as proper to the business in hand, being that equal right, that every man hath, to his natural freedom, without being subjected to the will or authority of any other man (Locke, second Treatise, 54).
In the “state of nature”, equality empowers any individual to try anything as long as it does not interfere with any other individual. Equality also gives the individual the power to ward off incursions by others on their property, since no person can without consent be subordinated to another. Any attempt at curtailing someone’s property is, in Locke’s view, an aggravation against the person’s liberty, disrespecting equality. In this “state of nature”, Locke pictures people being guided the laws of nature as God intended them to be – the philosopher was, however, not too critical of his own reading of the Bible, which was quite literal. He begins his Second Treatise of Government establishing as truths of nature mainly that God is the creator and that he did not grant superiority to any individuals. “In races of mankind and families of the world, there remains not to one above another, the least pretence to be the eldest house” (Locke, Second Treatise, 1).
The Polity
Locke discards the notion of royal or noble superiority and sponsors, instead, the idea of equal liberties of all individuals. In the “state of nature” where all individuals are equal in their liberty, these individuals can find each other and voluntarily exchange goods, information, or even create groups. The freely created groups of equals develop, of course, their own version of a grammar for social interaction. If this set of rules becomes mandatory to the members of the group, it does so because the members freely opted into the group and can freely opt out. In these voluntaristic contracts forming groups – established by individuals dealing with each other on grounds of equality – Locke sees the beginnings of the polity. As it is the case with any contract, the basis of the social contract lies in mutual consent, and individuals, coming from a state of “perfect freedom” – i.e. the equal distribution of freedom in its absolute sense, would not be willing to settle for less when they leave this “state of nature” when they form groups and especially when they agree to create the polity through a social contract.
The Lockean meaning of equality entails equality before the law and the general rules of society and it necessarily excludes any claim by any member of the polity on results, entitlements, or even transactional chances – these types of claim, for Locke are profoundly unjust and lead to inequality.
The transition, from the “state of nature” to community, society, or polity fundamentally builds upon this idea that equality is the equal distribution of absolute liberty. In forming a polity, the parties of the contract transform their liberties into clauses of rights, more specifically, the rights to ward off non-agreed interventions of this polity on personal freedoms as well as any incursions by other individuals. Interventions and incursions are not only problematic per se, they also distort the equality of liberties:
Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom, and an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world, hath by nature a power, not only to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men; but to judge of, and punish the breaches of that law in others, as he is persuaded the offence deserves, even with death itself, in crimes where the heinousness of the fact, in his opinion, requires it. But because no political society can be, nor subsist, without having in itself the power to preserve the property, and in order thereunto, punish the offences of all those of that society; there, and there only is political society, where every one of the members hath quitted this natural power, resigned it up into the hands of the community in all cases that exclude him not from appealing for protection to the law established by it. And thus all private judgment of every particular member being excluded, the community comes to be umpire, by settled standing rules, indifferent, and the same to all parties; and by men having authority from the community, for the execution of those rules, decides all the differences that may happen between any members of that society concerning any matter of right; and punishes those offences which any member hath committed against the society, with such penalties as the law has established: whereby it is easy to discern, who are, and who are not, in political society together. Those who are united into one body, and have a common established law and judicature to appeal to, with authority to decide controversies between them, and punish offenders, are in civil society one with another: but those who have no such common appeal, I mean on earth, are still in the state of nature, each being, where there is no other, judge for himself, and executioner; which is, as I have before shewed it, the perfect state of nature (Locke, Second Treatise, 87).
Because the individual is free and equal in the “state of nature”, there must be an assurance of continuing freedom as the individual enters society. Thus, for Locke, the establishment of the polity occurs on the basis of assured equal liberties without which there would be no incentive to enter into society. This assurance occurs by making the individuals’ rights part of the social contract. Natural equality transitions as people leave the “state of nature” and form a society and a polity. Once the polity is established, equality becomes a constraint to the polity’s organizational design. Equality, in what later would be called status negativus, gives individuals the right to use institutional instruments – be them rules of the grammar of social interaction or the organization of the polity, or both – to which they have a legitimate claim to ward off intrusions by the polity and incursions by other individuals.
Equality is the driving force of Locke’s political theory because it is the basis for a consensual participation in society of equally free people, a prerequisite for the establishment of any polity. As such, equality is not just necessary in the establishment of government but also a protection of the citizen against this polity, once it is set up. The Lockean meaning of equality entails equality before the law and the general rules of society and it necessarily excludes any claim by any member of the polity on results, entitlements, or even transactional chances – these types of claim, for Locke are profoundly unjust and lead to inequality.
Locke’s idea stands in sharp contrast to more recent conceptualizations of equality, for example as ex-post or ex-ante states of affairs, results, social desiderata and so on. In fact, these more recent notions do contradict the Lockean view in many instances. Establishing equality ex post automatically disrespects the equality before the law of some; guaranteeing equality ex ante equally hurts the idea that every person has the same rights. Any intervention of the polity on the liberties of an individual hurts equality, unless the particular incursion has been explicitly agreed upon by the concerned individual. It hurts equality because it turns the individual into a subject, the very definition of inequality, according to Locke.
Locke’s ideas have been reviewed here because his conception of equality respects the principle of proportionality and does not hide its normative component. Granted, it is attached to normative presuppositions, but these are made transparent. To regard all people as free and equal is a normative assumption of classical liberalism. It is the operationalization of this conception of equality that remains free of normativity and respects a diversity of individuals as well as a plurality of outcomes. It is not prejudging the result; it respects the decisions made by equally free but differently-willed, capable, endowed, ingenuous, industrious, or lucky people. At the same time, it holds these individuals accountable to their decisions, even or especially in cases in which the decisions led to negative outcomes to the agent. Locke’s conception is undetermined and open textured and as such compatible with a free society.
Sense
The contemporary discourse on equality and justice is nonsensical: it uses these two concepts not to study them, but to hide normative preferences which lead to policy prescriptions. Since the contemporary conceptions of justice often generalize personal preferences by those putting them forward, they do injustice to individuals. Often, these generalized opinions about outcomes hurt liberties, property, and consensual contractualism. Additionally, these objectifications of personal values set aside the grammar of social interaction replacing it with the “rulebook” of an organization tasked with administering equality and justice. This move leads, per se, to the dehumanization of these conceptions.
When the terms “equality” and “justice” are just used as academic cover-ups for advancing particularistic agendas, they become nonsense, or mal-sense.
On the other hand, the classical liberal conception of justice as a good that is subjectively valued and dealt with according to individual virtues is much less normative. It is also less intrusive allowing for a plurality of outcomes mirroring the diversity of individuals. In addition, the classical liberal understanding of equality as the unconditional freedom which is equally distributed among all people is a proportionate way of committing to equality while allowing for individual development. This conception is made operational by the rights of individuals to ward off intrusions by the polity as well as incursions by other individuals, foremost on their private property.
Equality and justice are important concepts in the classic liberal discourse. They are important because they make sense in offering the individual an un-determined, open-textured, and level playing field in which each can act freely and be held fully accountable for the actions. A meaningful way of conceptualizing both terms maximizes individual liberty, private property, consensual contractualism and personal accountability. When, however, the terms “equality” and “justice” are just used as academic cover-ups for advancing particularistic agendas, they become nonsense, or mal-sense.
References
Acemoglu, D. & Robinson, J. (2015). The Rise and Decline of General Laws of Capitalism. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29(1), 3–28.
Buchanan, A., & Mathieu, D. (1986). Philosophy and justice. In Justice (pp. 11-45). Springer US.
Fay, B. (1996).Contemporary philosophy of social science: A multicultural approach. Oxford: Blackwell.
Góes, C. (2016).Testing Piketty’s Hypothesis on the Drivers of Income Inequality: Evidence from Panel VARs with Heterogeneous Dynamics. International Monetary Fund working paper 16160.
Griswold, C. L. (1999). Adam Smith and the virtues of enlightenment. Cambridge University Press.
Locke, J. (1698, 1946). The second treatise of civil government: And a letter concerning toleration. B. Blackwell.
MacIntyre, A. C. (1988). Whose justice? Which rationality? University of Notre Dame Press.
McCloskey, D. N. (2006). Bourgeois Virtue. University of Chicago Press.
Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Belknap Press.
Primeaux, P. S., Karri, R., & Caldwell, C. (2003). Cultural insights to justice: A theoretical perspective through a subjective lens. Journal of Business Ethics, 46(2), 187-199.
Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Belknap Press.
Sandel, M. J. (1998). Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge University Press.
Schneider, H. (2018). Virtues Matter: The interested self in Adam Smith and Confucius. Dao, forthcoming.
Siedentop, L. (2014). Inventing the individual: The origins of Western liberalism. Harvard University Press.
Smith, A. (1759). The theory of moral sentiments. Raphael, D & MacFie, A. (eds.), Liberty Fund.
Smith, A. (1776). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Longman.
Snow, N. (2010). Virtue as Social Intelligence: An Empirically Grounded Theory. Routledge.
Snow, N. (ed.) (2015). Cultivating Virtue. Oxford University Press.
Sutch, R. (2017). The One Percent across Two Centuries: A Replication of Thomas Piketty’s Data on the Concentration of Wealth in the United States. Social Science History, 41(4), 587-613.
Waldron, J. (2002). God, Locke, and equality: Christian foundations in Locke’s political thought. Cambridge University Press.
Population and Environment: A Global Challenge
Our Growing Population
We humans are remarkable creatures. From our humble beginnings in small pockets of Africa, we have evolved over millennia to colonise almost every corner of our planet. We are clever, resilient and adaptable―perhaps a little too adaptable.
In 2015 the world population is more than 7.3 billion people. That’s more than seven billion three hundred million bodies that need to be fed, clothed, kept warm and ideally, nurtured and educated. More than 7.3 billion individuals who, while busy consuming resources, are also producing vast quantities of waste, and our numbers continue to grow. The United Nations estimates that the world population will reach 9.2 billion by 2050.
For most of our existence the human population has grown very slowly, kept in check by disease, climate fluctuations and other social factors. It took until 1804 for us to reach 1 billion people. Since then, continuing improvements in nutrition, medicine and technology have seen our population increase rapidly.
The impact of so many humans on the environment takes two major forms:
- consumption of resources such as land, food, water, air, fossil fuels and minerals
- waste products as a result of consumption such as air and water pollutants, toxic materials and greenhouse gases
More Than Just Numbers
Many people worry that unchecked population growth will eventually cause an environmental catastrophe. This is an understandable fear, and a quick look at the circumstantial evidence certainly shows that as our population has increased, the health of our environment has decreased. The impact of so many people on the planet has resulted in some scientists coining a new term to describe our time—the Anthropocene epoch. Unlike previous geological epochs, where various geological and climate processes defined the time periods, the proposed Anthropecene period is named for the dominant influence humans and their activities are having on the environment. In essence, humans are a new global geophysical force.
However, while population size is part of the problem, the issue is bigger and more complex than just counting bodies.
There are many factors at play. Essentially, it is what is happening within those populations—their distribution (density, migration patterns and urbanization), their composition (age, sex and income levels) and, most importantly, their consumption patterns—that are of equal, if not more importance, than just numbers.
Focusing solely on population number obscures the multifaceted relationship between us humans and our environment, and makes it easier for us to lay the blame at the feet of others, such as those in developing countries, rather than looking at how our own behavior may be negatively affecting the planet.
Let’s take a closer look at the issues.
Population Size
It’s no surprise that as the world population continues to grow, the limits of essential global resources such as potable water, fertile land, forests and fisheries are becoming more obvious. You don’t have to be a maths whizz to work out that, on the whole, more people use more resources and create more waste.
But how many people is too many? How many of us can Earth realistically support?
Influenced by the work of Thomas Malthus, ‘ carrying capacity ‘ can be defined as the maximum population size an environment can sustain indefinitely.
Debate about the actual human carrying capacity of Earth dates back hundreds of years. The range of estimates is enormous, fluctuating from 500 million people to more than one trillion. Scientists disagree not only on the final number, but more importantly about the best and most accurate way of determining that number—hence the huge variability.
How can this be? Whether we have 500 million people or one trillion, we still have only one planet, which has a finite level of resources. The answer comes back to resource consumption. People around the world consume resources differently and unevenly. An average middle-class American consumes 3.3 times the subsistence level of food and almost 250 times the subsistence level of clean water. So if everyone on Earth lived like a middle class American, then the planet might have a carrying capacity of around 2 billion. However, if people only consumed what they actually needed, then the Earth could potentially support a much higher figure.
But we need to consider not just quantity but also quality—Earth might be able to theoretically support over one trillion people, but what would their quality of life be like? Would they be scraping by on the bare minimum of allocated resources, or would they have the opportunity to lead an enjoyable and full life?
More importantly, could these trillion people cooperate on the scale required, or might some groups seek to use a disproportionate fraction of resources? If so, might other groups challenge that inequality, including through the use of violence?
These are questions that are yet to be answered.
Population Distribution
The ways in which populations are spread across Earth has an effect on the environment. Developing countries tend to have higher birth rates due to poverty and lower access to family planning and education, while developed countries have lower birth rates. In 2015, 80 per cent of the world’s population live in less-developed nations. These faster-growing populations can add pressure to local environments.
Globally, in almost every country, humans are also becoming more urbanised. In 1960 less than one third of the world’s population lived in cities. By 2014, that figure was 54 per cent, with a projected rise to 66 per cent by 2050.
While many enthusiasts for centralisation and urbanisation argue this allows for resources to be used more efficiently, in developing countries this mass movement of people heading towards the cities in search of employment and opportunity often outstrips the pace of development, leading to slums, poor (if any) environmental regulation, and higher levels of centralised pollution. Even in developed nations, more people are moving to the cities than ever before. The pressure placed on growing cities and their resources such as water, energy and food due to continuing growth includes pollution from additional cars, heaters and other modern luxuries, which can cause a range of localised environmental problems.
Humans have always moved around the world. However, government policies, conflict or environmental crises can enhance these migrations, often causing short or long-term environmental damage. For example, since 2011 conditions in the Middle East have seen population transfer (also known as unplanned migration) result in several million refugees fleeing countries including Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. The sudden development of often huge refugee camps can affect water supplies, cause land damage (such as felling of trees for fuel) or pollute environments (lack of sewerage systems).
Population Composition
The composition of a population can also affect the surrounding environment. At present, the global population has both the largest proportion of young people (under 24) and the largest percentage of elderly people in history. As young people are more likely to migrate, this leads to intensified urban environmental concerns, as listed above.
Life expectancy has increased by approximately 20 years since 1960. While this is a triumph for mankind, and certainly a good thing for the individual, from the planet’s point of view it is just another body that is continuing to consume resources and produce waste for around 40 per cent longer than in the past.
Ageing populations are another element to the multi-faceted implications of demographic population change, and pose challenges of their own. For example between 1970 and 2006, Japan’s proportion of people over 65 grew from 7 per cent to more than 20 per cent of its population. This has huge implications on the workforce, as well as government spending on pensions and health care.
Population income is also an important consideration. The uneven distribution of income results in pressure on the environment from both the lowest and highest income levels. In order to simply survive, many of the world’s poorest people partake in unsustainable levels of resource use, for example burning rubbish, tyres or plastics for fuel. They may also be forced to deplete scarce natural resources, such as forests or animal populations, to feed their families. On the other end of the spectrum, those with the highest incomes consume disproportionately large levels of resources through the cars they drive, the homes they live in and the lifestyle choices they make.
On a country-wide level, economic development and environmental damage are also linked. The least developed nations tend to have lower levels of industrial activity, resulting in lower levels of environmental damage. The most developed countries have found ways of improving technology and energy efficiency to reduce their environmental impact while retaining high levels of production. It is the countries in between—those that are developing and experiencing intense resource consumption (which may be driven by demand from developed countries)—that are often the location of the most environmental damage.
Population Consumption
While poverty and environmental degradation are closely interrelated, it is the unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, primarily in developed nations, that are of even greater concern.
It’s not often that those in developed countries stop and consider our own levels of consumption. For many, particularly in industrialised countries, the consumption of goods and resources is just a part of our lives and culture, promoted not only by advertisers but also by governments wanting to continually grow their economy. Culturally, it is considered a normal part of life to shop, buy and consume, to continually strive to own a bigger home or a faster car, all frequently promoted as signs of success. It may be fine to participate in consumer culture and to value material possessions, but in excess it is harming both the planet and our emotional wellbeing.
The environmental impact of all this consumption is huge. The mass production of goods, many of them unnecessary for a comfortable life, is using large amounts of energy, creating excess pollution, and generating huge amounts of waste.
To complicate matters, environmental impacts of high levels of consumption are not confined to the local area or even country. For example, the use of fossil fuels for energy (to drive our bigger cars, heat and cool our bigger houses) has an impact on global CO2 levels and resulting environmental effects. Similarly, richer countries are also able to rely on resource and/or waste-intensive imports being produced in poorer countries. This enables them to enjoy the products without having to deal with the immediate impacts of the factories or pollution that went in to creating them.
On a global scale, not all humans are equally responsible for environmental harm. Consumption patterns and resource use are very high in some parts of the world, while in others—often in countries with far more people—they are low, and the basic needs of whole populations are not being met. A study undertaken in 2009 showed that the countries with the fastest population growth also had the slowest increases in carbon emissions. The reverse was also true—for example the population of North America grew only 4 per cent between 1980 and 2005, while its carbon emissions grew by 14 per cent.
Individuals living in developed countries have, in general, a much bigger ecological footprint than those living in the developing world. The ecological footprint is a standardised measure of how much productive land and water is needed to produce the resources that are consumed, and to absorb the wastes produced by a person or group of people.
Today humanity uses the equivalent of 1.5 planets to provide the resources we use and absorb our waste. This means it now takes the Earth one year and six months to regenerate what we use in a year. Global Footprint Network
When Australian consumption is viewed from a global perspective, we leave an exceptionally large ‘ecological footprint’—one of the largest in the world. While the average global footprint is 2.7 global hectares, in 2014 Australia’s ecological footprint was calculated at 6.7 global hectares per person (this large number is mostly due to our carbon emissions). To put this in perspective, if the rest of world lived like we do in Australia, we would need the equivalent of 3.6 Earths to meet the demand.
Similarly, an American has an ecological footprint almost 9 times larger than an Indian—so while the population of India far exceeds that of the United States, in terms of environmental damage, it is the American consumption of resources that is causing the higher level of damage to the planet.
What is the Solution?
How do we solve the delicate problem of population growth and environmental limitations? Joel Cohen, a mathematician and author characterised potential solutions in the following way:
1. A Bigger Pie: Technical Innovation
This theory looks to innovation and technology as Earth’s saviour, not only to extend the planet’s human carrying capacity, but to also improve the quality of life for each individual. Advances in food production technologies such as agriculture, water purification and genetic engineering may help to feed the masses, while moving away from fossil fuels to renewable power sources such as wind and solar will go some way to reducing climate change.
‘Economic decoupling’ refers to the ability of an economy to grow without corresponding increases in environmental pressure. In 2014 the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released a report titled ‘Decoupling 2‘, which explored the possibilities and opportunities of technology and innovation to accelerate decoupling, and an analysis of how far technical innovation can go.
Funding and research should be a high priority in these areas, but we must accept that technology can only do so much, and is only part of the solution.
2. Fewer Forks: Education and Policy Change
This theory is based on demographic transition, effectively finding ways to slow or stop population growth resulting in fewer people fighting for resources or ‘slices’ of pie.
Birth rates naturally decline when populations are given access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, education for boys and girls beyond the primary level is encouraged and made available, and women are empowered to participate in social and political life. Continuing to support programs and policies in these areas should see a corresponding drop in birth rates. Similarly, as the incomes of individuals in developing countries increase, there is a corresponding decrease in birth rates. This is another incentive for richer countries to help their poorer neighbours reach their development potential.
Providing a health, educational or financial incentive has also proven to be effective in combating some population issues. For example, paying money to people with two or fewer children or allowing free education for families with a single child has been trialled with some success. However, there are debates about incentive programs (such as paying women in India to undergo sterilisation). Opponents question whether accepting these incentives is really is a choice, or whether the recipient has been coerced into it through community pressure or financial desperation.
Fewer forks can also cover another complicated area—the option of seriously controlling population growth by force. China has done so in the past and attracted both high praise and severe humanitarian criticism. This is a morally-, economically- and politically-charged topic, to which there is no easy answer.
3. Better Manners: Less is More
The better manners approach seeks to educate people about their actions and the consequences of those actions, leading to a change in behaviour. This relates not only to individuals but also governments. Individuals across the world, but particularly in developed countries, need to reassess their consumption patterns. Numerous studies have shown that more ‘stuff’ doesn’t make people happier anyway. We need to step back and re-examine what is important and actively find ways to reduce the amount of resources we consume. Taking shorter showers, saying no to single-use plastics, buying less, recycling our waste and reviewing our mode and frequency of travel may seem trivial, but if millions around the world begin to do it as well, the difference will begin to add up.
Governments too need to instigate shifts in environmental policy to protect and enhance natural areas, reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, invest in renewable energy sources and focus on conservation as priorities.
Developing countries should be supported by their more developed neighbours to reach their development goals in sustainable, practical ways.
In reality, there is no single, easy solution. All three options must be part of a sustainable future.
Where to from Here?
Population is an issue that cannot be ignored. While we can all do our bit to reduce our own global footprint, the combined impact of billions of other footprints will continue to add up. There are many who believe that if we do not find ways of limiting the numbers of people on Earth ourselves, then Earth itself will eventually find ways of doing it for us.
Interestingly, despite population increase being such a serious issue, the United Nations has held only three world conferences on population and development (in 1945, 1974 and 1994).
However, governments around the world are beginning to recognise the seriousness and importance of the situation, and are taking steps to reduce the environmental impacts of increasing populations and consumption such as through pollution reduction targets for air, soil and water pollutants. The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, scheduled for December 2015, is one example; however any international policies need to be backed up by workable solutions at the individual, local and regional level.
Conclusion
With more than 7.3 billion people on the planet, it’s easy to assume someone else will tackle and solve the issue of population and environment. Yet it is an issue that affects us all, and as such we’re all responsible for working towards a sustainable future in which everyone is able to enjoy a good quality of life without destroying the very things we rely on to survive. It’s possible, but it will take the combined and coordinated efforts of individuals, communities, and governments to get there.
Mr. Rows Namoura Coffee 
Kopi Dalam Gempuran Perubahan Iklim
Indonesia saat ini merupakan eksportir kopi nomor empat di dunia setelah Brazil, Vietnam dan Kolombia. Ini menunjukkan bahwa kopi sudah memberikan devisa berharga bagi negeri ini. Produksi kopi dalam 12 tahun cendrung menurun dengan laju 0.7% per tahun. Pada tahun tertentu penurunan bisa lebih besar akibat penyimpangan iklim yang cukup ekstrim. Perubahan iklim diperkirakan akan meningkatkan frekuensi dan intensitas iklim ekstrim yang dapat menurunkan panen kopi secara signifikan. Hal yang lebih mengkhawatirkan, kenaikan suhu yang terus terjadi dapat menyebabkan kopi tidak lagi dapat berproduksi dan pada saatnya nanti kita tidak lagi dapat menikmati lezatnya secangkir kopi.
Kopi Indonesia sudah lama terkenal di dunia dengan citarasa yang khas dari setiap daerah penghasil kopi. Kopi Gayo – Aceh, Sidikalang – Sumatera Utara, Pangalengan – Jawa Barat, Kintamani – Bali, Toraja – Sulawesi Selatan, Wamena – Papua, dan kopi dari daerah lainnya di Indonesia memiliki rasa yang berbeda. Keanekaragaman rasa kopi di Indonesia menjadi salah satu daya tarik sehingga penikmat kopi tidak pernah bosan dan selalu mencoba berbagai rasa. Beragamnya rasa kopi dari setiap daerah disebabkan oleh sifat biofisik yang berbeda seperti jenis tanaman dan satwa yang mendiami daerah tersebut.
Kopi yang hidup pada dataran tinggi akan berbeda rasanya dengan kopi dataran rendah. Kopi yang bersimbiosis dengan tanaman hutan akan berbeda rasanya dengan kopi yang berdampingan dengan pohon mangga, durian atau pohon buah-buahan lainnya. Begitu pula interaksi dengan fauna lainnya yang turut berpengaruh. Selain itu tentu saja kondisi iklim juga memberikan dampak terhadap rasa kopi dan produktivitasnya. Kopi tertentu tidak bisa berproduksi atau produksi sangat rendah karena berubahnya kondisi iklim.
Pengamatan di Afrika selama 49 tahun terakhir menunjukkan adanya kenaikan suhu yang cukup konsisten dan menyebabkan penurunan produktivitas kopi yang cukup signifikan yaitu sebesar 46%. Wilayah pertanaman yang sesuai untuk tanaman kopi juga semakin terbatas. Di Indonesia, wilayah pertanaman kopi utama untuk jenis arabika umumnya pada wilayah dengan ketinggian di atas 1000 m d.p.l. sedangkan robusta antara 400-800 m d.p.l.
Upaya adaptasi yang dilakukan petani dengan naiknya suhu udara dan berubahnya pola hujan akibat perubahan iklim ialah mengembangkan wilayah pertanaman kopi baru ke wilayah yang lebih tinggi. Wilayah dengan ketinggian di atas 1000 m d.p.l. umumnya di Indonesia umumnya masih berupa hutan dan berada pada kawasan lindung. Penelitian yangh dilaksanakan oleh Tim peneliti IPB di wilayah Toba, Sumatera Utara, menemukan bahwa sudah banyak petani yang mengembangkan kebun kopinya ke wilayah yang lebih tinggi dan masuk ke wilayah hutan lindung, karena suhu lebih rendah dan masalah hama relatif lebih rendah.
Pada saat ini, sekitar 62% kebun kopi petani di Kabupaten Samosir berada di kawasan lindung. Hasil prediksi yang dilakukan oleh Tim Peneliti IPB, apabila tidak ada upaya pencarian varietas yang lebih adaptif terhadap suhu tinggi, wilayah yang sangat sesuai (‘very suitable’) untuk pertanaman kopi yang sesuai di wilayah Toba akan bergeser ke ketinggian di atas 1500 m d.p.l. Wilayah yang saat ini sangat sesuai untuk tanaman kopi akan menjadi tidak sesuai (unsuitable). Hal ini berarti akan mengancam keberadaan hutan lindung.
Tantangan lain, terjadinya kenaikan suhu akibat perubahan iklim juga akan meningkatkan serangan hama penggerek buah kopi. Pengamatan selama 10 tahun terakhir di wilayah Toba menunjukkan adanya tren kenaikan tingkat serangan hama ini. Hasil proyeksi tim peneliti IPB menunjukkan bahwa tingkat serangan hama penggerek buah kopi akan semakin besar ke depan. Terjadinya kenaikan suhu akan menurunkan lama waktu yang diperlukan untuk menggandakan diri.
Pada saat ini di wilayah pertanaman kopi arabika (ketinggian 700-1500 m d.p,l), waktu yang diperlukan hama penggerek buah kopi untuk menggandakan diri antara 10 sampai 12 hari (hijau), di masa yang akan datang akan lebih singkat, yaitu hanya sekitar 4-5 hari (merah). Dapat dibayangkan semakin cepatnya pertumbuhan populasi hama penggerek buah kopi, maka tingkat serangan hama akan semakin tinggi, dua sampai tiga kali lebih parah dari saat ini dan dapat membuat petani kopi tidak dapat lagi memanen kopinya. Lebih lanjut hasil prediksi tim IPB, penurunan produktivitas kopi akibat perubahan iklim dapat mencapai lebih dari 50%. Tanpa upaya adaptasi, produktivitas kopi pada wilayah pertanaman kopi saat ini tidak akan melebihi 0.5 t/ha.
Prasyarat Internasional
Dunia internasional saat ini semakin menyukai kopi Indonesia. Namum demikian, dunia internasional memiliki prasyarat-prasyarat dalam mengkonsumsi berbagai komoditi termasuk kopi. Perhatian negara-negara Eropa dan Amerika terhadap isu lingkungan akhir-akhir ini semakin besar. Untuk itu kopi Indonesia harus mulai membenahi produksi kopi khususnya pada tahap budidaya dan pasca panen. Negara-negara maju semakin peduli dengan isu deforestasi dan degradasi lahan. Terjadinya perubahan iklim diprediksi akan membatasi wilayah pengembangan kopi ke wilayah yang lebih tinggi yang umumnya berada pada kawasan lindung dan berhutan.
Perilaku budidaya kopi pada daerah lindung dan konservasi dengan karbon tinggi akan berpengaruh terhadap perubahan iklim (PI). Negara-begara Uni Eropah pengimpor komoditas pertanian mensyaratkan bahwa dalam pengembangan kebun atau lahan pertanian tidak menyebabkan terjadinya konversi atau pemanfaatan lahan-lahan yang memiliki cadangan karbon tinggi seperti hutan. Apabila pola pengembangan kebun kopi dengan pemanfaatan atau pembukaan lahan berhutan terus berlanjut maka akan berdampak pada citra kopi Indonesia di mata internasional. Untuk itu dibutuhkan strategi dalam pengembangan dan kajian teknologi sehingga kopi Indonesia lebih adaptif terhadap perubahan iklim dan produksinya meningkat dengan citarasa terjaga, sehingga tetap laku di dunia.
Teknologi Adaptif Iklim untuk Petani Kopi
Beragamnya pengaruh perubahan iklim terhadap tanaman kopi, menimbulkan kekhawatiran banyak Negara penghasil kopi dan sudah barang tentu bagi para pencandu kopi. Hilangnya kopi dengan cita rasa tertentu karena tidak lagi bisa dikembangkan akibat perubahan iklim, sudah menjadi perbincangan dunia. Berbagai media melaporkan bahwa perubahan iklim sudah mengancam kopi. Tanpa ada upaya adaptasi, bukan tidak mungkin dalam 30 tahun ke depan, banyak negara penghasil kopi saat ini tidak lagi bisa berproduksi, bahkan diprediksi 50 tahun ke depan, kita tidak lagi bisa menikmati secangkir kopi karena kopi tidak lagi bisa ditanam karena dengan terjadinya perubahan iklim, tidak ada lagi lokasi yang bisa ditanami kopi.
Oleh karena itu, diperlukan adanya varietas atau jenis kopi yang lebih tahan suhu tinggi, teknologi yang adaptif, tahan terhadap serangan hama dan memiliki produksi yang tinggi. Petani menunggu bimbingan dari parapihak, pemerintah dan ahli kopi. Dari pengamatan lapangan, sebagian besar petani kopi di wilayah Toba masih banyak yang belum menerapkan praktek-praktek budidaya pertanian dan manajemen yang baik. Kegiatan pemangkasan misalnya jarang dilakukan petani, kalaupun ada tidak dilakukan secara kontinu atau bagian-bagian tanaman yang dipangkas tidak menentu, sehingga tanaman menjadi tinggi yang menyulitkan pada saat panen, cabang-cabang meranggas sehingga komposisi antara cabang-cabang bawah, tengah dan atas tidak seimbang dan proporsional lagi.
Kondisi ini menyebabkan umur ekonomisnya menjadi lebih singkat. Penggunaan naungan juga banyak yang belum melakukannya, sementara tanaman kopi sangat memerlukan kondisi ini. Pengendalian hama penggerek buah juga relatif tidak dilakukan dengan baik. Buah yang rusak dan diserang penggerek buah banyak ditinggalkan dibiarkan jatuh di tanah sehingga menjadi sumber makanan bagi hama untuk terus berkembang. Pengelolaan yang baik, ialah dengan memutus siklus hama dengan cara mengambil semua buah yang ada pada tanaman maupun yang jatuh di tanah dan dimusnahkan. Cara pengendalian ini akan efektif apabila dilakukan oleh semua petani dalam suatu hamparan yang sama, kalau tidak hama PBKo hanya akan pindah dari satu kebun ke kebun lainnya. Kurang diterapkannya praktek-prekter pertanian yang baik membuat tanaman kopi semakin rentan terhadap dampak perubahan iklim.
Momentum tingginya permintaan kopi dalam negeri, luar negeri dan persepsi positif masyarakat terhadap kopi yang ditandai dengan maraknya berbagai café-café kopi perlu disikapi dengan melakukan edukasi pada petani kopi. Petani yang terlanjur melakukan budidaya kopi pada areal konservasi dan lokasi yang memiliki stok karbon tinggi diharapkan tidak mengembangkan lagi pada daerah lain dengan kondisi sama. Perlu dicarikan lokasi budidaya kopi berupa daerah terdeforestasi atau stok karbon rendah dan dalam pengembangannya menggunakan tanaman naungan multiguna yang dapat menciptakan kondisi iklim mikro yang sesuai bagi kopi. Namun demikian, pengembangan kebun kopi ke dalam wilayah berhutan tanpa merusak hutannya melalui program perhutanan sosial juga dapat dilakukan.
Prof. Dr. Rizaldi Boer, Direktur Eksekutif CCROM SEAP IPB
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