Specialties of Nicaragua: how adversity became advantage.(coffee plantations)(Industry Overview)

Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, March, 2002 by Campos, Faye; Delgado, Eduardo; Vargas, Alberto

Returning home after the war, many Nicaraguan farmers found their coffee plantations abandoned. After years of fighting they lacked the economic resources to improve the farms that support their families. They worked through these challenges finding opportunity in adversity.

Jose Maria had recently returned home after an internal conflict in Nicaragua had ended the lives of thousands. He didn't have work, but he hoped to obtain a small parcel of land through the government's agrarian reform. With land, he could make his living the only way that he knew, by working the earth, and in that way he could help support his parents and perhaps start his own family.

In the 1980s Jose Maria had cultivated a small three hectare parcel, located in northern...

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