From Supply and Demand to Numbers, Networks, and Narratives: Confronting the Commodification of Specialty Coffee Producers
English | 2026 | ISBN: 0198871465 | 279 pages | True EPUB | 1.75 MB
This book poses an important question for economic sociologists: as expanding specialty coffee markets call for higher-quality coffees produced and transacted in certain ways, why is there not a widespread expectation that the producers who grow these differentiated coffees should receive prices that are commensurate with the economic value they create? Moving past an overly simple economics, Roberts does not accept that problematic specialty coffee pricing is the direct result of ongoing problems with global supply and demand. The real problems are that the people who grow differentiated specialty coffees do not have access to relevant price information and that they have outdated market connections. These numbers and networks problems are exacerbated by a more fundamental problem. Conversations about the value of green specialty coffees remain rooted in an outdated pricing narrative that features global scarcity rather than quality-based differentiation.