Browsing by Author "Rosenberg, Lauren Liesl"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Turi kumwe (we are together) : a transdisciplinary exploration of the Burundian specialty coffee sector and its sustainability challenges
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-12) Rosenberg, Lauren Liesl; Vermeulen, Walter J. V.; Swilling, Mark; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. School of Public Leadership.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY : Coffee is considered as a pioneering example of sustainable production and trade amongst tropical commodities because of its rich history of alternative trading practices and movements. The most common way of producing ‘sustainable coffee’ is through the certification of production using voluntary or private sustainability standards. Sustainable coffee consumption is increasingly being mainstreamed; shaking off the niche, idiosyncratic market image it occupied in previous decades. Compared to the beginnings of the fair/ethical trade coffee movement, it is now relatively easy for large volume buyers (especially retailers) to purchase sustainable coffee through conventional trading companies that use third-party certification and labelling. The trend towards ‘sticker coffee’ implies that large volume coffee buyers regard origin (the people and place where a particular coffee comes from) as significantly less important than the sticker that certifies the production processes as ‘sustainable’. Supplier substitutability, a common practice in the conventional coffee market, is now common practice within the sustainable coffee market. Smaller origins (those that cannot offer large volumes) as well as origins that that are the furthest away from the standards of production required for certification (often as a result of their relatively low level of development) will struggle to gain a foothold and compete in the sustainable coffee market. Recognising the tension between the trade potential of standardising sustainability and the realities of context is at the core of this study. This thesis is rooted in the lived experience of working in a coffee producing company in one of the world’s poorest countries, Burundi. It is an attempt to learn about sustainability issues within the Burundian coffee sector by inserting the research into an actual coffee supply chain. An open research agenda was maintained in order to design the research process as it unfolded using Emergent Transformation Design (ETD) – a transdisciplinary research approach suitable for a developing world context. The joint problem definition of the ETD revealed that the production of high quality coffee was critically important for the local producer organisation in which the research was embedded and that production needed to be done in such a way as to build authentic trust relationships with local farmers. An Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programme, employing 26 young Burundians, emerged from the joint problem definition. This thesis reflectively documents the unplanned, yet intuitive, research journey that lead to the creation of the IPM programme.