of Coffee Growers’ Biblioteca Cenicafé.
The cartographer Marie Puddister turned my amateurish scrawls into the elegant maps found throughout the book. The biologist Angel Luis Viloria Petit offered his considerable talents as a natural history illustrator to depict the life cycle of the coffee leaf rust. Doña Rosa Maria Fernández kindly gave me permission to reproduce the delightful illustrations by her late husband, the cartoonist Hugo Díaz Jiménez; the journalist Carlos Morales provided vital help in coordinating these permissions. I thank the editors of the Annals of Botany, the British Library; the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew; the Tropenmuseum; and World Coffee Research for permission to reproduce images in this book. I have previously explored some of the ideas that inform this book in articles published in the Journal of Global History, Phytopathology, the Revista de historia (Costa Rica), and Varia historia (Brazil), as well as a chapter in the edited collection Knowing Global Environments, edited by Jeremy Vetter and published by Rutgers University Press. They are reprinted with permission, where permission was necessary.
The staff at Ohio University Press have been consistently supportive and patient. Thanks to Nancy Basmajian, Gillian Berchowitz, Rick Huard, Samara Rafert, Sally Welch, and the whole team at the press who helped turn this project into a reality. Beth Pratt designed the striking cover, which I am sure will catch people’s attention and invite them to take a look inside the book. Alice White carefully copyedited the manuscript, giving it a vital final polish. Robert Kern skillfully guided the complex process of transforming my raw manuscript into the book you have before you.
This research was supported by a generous Standard Research Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which gave me the time and resources necessary to conduct the initial research.
Much of this book was, appropriately enough, composed in cafés. In Guelph, the Red Brick Café and Planet Bean provided congenial writing environments. Much of the book was drafted and revised at the Brûlerie St. Denis on Rue St. Denis in Montreal, which for the price of a coffee allowed me to occupy the same table every morning, day after day, month after month. I could look up from my computer and see chalkboards listing coffees from the countries that I was writing about at that moment. Thanks especially to Stacey Cote-Jacques for the delicious lattés that fueled my muses, and for the conversations about coffee and origins.
During the years I worked on this project, I lost a number of people close to me. Between 2006 and 2010, my parents Buff and Monica McCook and my brother Douglas McCook passed away. My parents were deeply committed to ensuring that their children had a good education, a commitment that is the foundation of my life as a historian. My grandmothers Edith McCook and Marion Sullivan also passed away during these years; they each leave me with fond memories of lively conversations, and so much more. My uncle Brian Blomme passed away in 2016; I miss his quiet sense of humor and his deep commitment to environmental issues. My father-in-law, Angel Antonio Viloria, who loved reading and had a boundless curiosity about the world around him, died just a few weeks before I submitted the final manuscript. I regret that they are not here to celebrate its completion.
I would like to give a warm thanks to my families by birth and marriage in Canada and Venezuela. My extended Guelph family—my sister Sue McCook and brother-in-law Robert Chin and their children Cameron, Becca, and Gabby—helped in many ways. In the final weeks of the project, we adopted a cat named Luna, who helped keep things in perspective by reminding me that (mysteriously) some creatures don’t care at all about the history of coffee, or the coffee rust. Alicia Viloria-Petit has been both a literal and metaphorical companion on this project’s long journey; her love and support have made it possible. Our daughter Lucía was born while this project was in progress, and happily has inherited her parents’ love of travel. She now knows far more about the coffee commodity chain than the average Canadian eleven-year-old. Without Lucía, the book would have been finished much more quickly, but my life would have been infinitely poorer. Lucía brings me joy every single day; in return, I dedicate this book to her.
Abbreviations and Acronyms
| AMECAFÉ | Asociación Mexicana de la Cadena Productiva del Café, A.C. (Mexican Association of the Coffee Production Chain) |
| ANACAFÉ | Asociación Nacional del Café (National Coffee Association; Guatemala) |
| CABI | Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux International |
| CADA | Companhia Angolana de Agricultura (Angolan Agriculture Corporation) |
| CAFÉNICA | Asociación de Cooperativas de Pequeños Productores de Café de Nicaragua (Association of Cooperatives of Small Coffee Producers of Nicaragua) |
| CATIE | Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center; Turrialba, Costa Rica) |
| CBD | coffee berry disease |
| CEFCA | Comissão Executiva da Erradicação da Ferrugem do Cafeeiro (Executive Committee for the Eradication of the Coffee Rust; Brazil) |
| CENICAFÉ | Centro Nacional de Investigaciones de Café (National Center for Coffee Research; Chinchiná, Colombia) |
| CIFC | Centro de Investigação das Ferrugens do Cafeeiro (Centre for Research into Coffee Rusts; Oeiras, Portugal) |
| CIRAD | Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development) |
| CRS | Catholic Relief Services |
| EMPBRAPA | Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation) |
| ENA | Escola Nacional da Agricultura (National Agricultural School; Portugal) |
| FAO | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations |
| FNC | Federación Nacional de Cafeteros (National Federation of Coffee Growers; Colombia) |
| GERCA | Grupo Executivo de Racionalização da Cafeicultura (Executive Group for the Rationalization of Coffee Farming; Brazil) |
| GTZ | Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (German Technical Cooperation Agency; West Germany) |
| IAC | Instituto Agronômico de Campinas (Campinas Agronomic Institute; Brazil) |
| IBC | Instituto Brasileiro do Café (Brazilian Coffee Institute) |
| ICA | International Coffee Agreement |
| ICO | International Coffee Organization |
| IFCC | Institut Français du Café et du Cacao (French Coffee and Cacao Institute) |
| ICAFÉ | Instituto del Café de Costa Rica (Costa Rican Coffee Institute) |
| IHCAFÉ | Instituto Hondureño del Café (Honduran Coffee Institute) |
| IICA | Instituto Interamericano de Cooperación para la Agricultura (Interamerican Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture; Costa Rica) |
| INEAC | Institut National pour l’Etude Agronomique du Congo Belge (National Institute for the Agronomic Study of the Belgian Congo) |
| INMECAFÉ | Instituto Mexicano del Café (Mexican Coffee Institute) |
| JIU | Junta de Investigações do Ultramar (Board of Overseas Research; Portugal) |
| MAG | Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadería (Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock; Costa Rica) |
| NISM | Netherlands India Steam Navigation Company |
| OIRSA | Organismo Internacional Regional de Sanidad Agropecuaria (Regional International Organization for Agricultural Health; Mexico and Central America) |
| ORSTOM | Office de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique Outre-Mer (Office of Overseas Scientific and Technical Research; France) |
| PIAC | Plan Integral de Atención al Café (Integrated Program for Coffee; Mexico) |
| PROMECAFÉ | Programa Cooperativo Regional Para el Desarollo Tecnológico y Modernización de la Caficultura (Regional Cooperative Program for Technological Development and Modernization of Coffee Production) |
| PSF | Permanencia Sostenibilidad y Futuro (Permanence, Sustainability, and Future; Colombia) |
| ROCAP | Regional Office for Central America and Panama, Office of USAID |
| SAGARPA | Secretaría de Agricultura, Ganadería, Desarrollo Rural, Pesca, y Alimentación (Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries, and Food; Mexico) |
| SENASICA | Servicio Nacional de Sanidad, Inocuidad, y Calidad Agroalimentaria (National Health Service, Food Safety, and Food Quality; Mexico) |
| SICA | Sistema
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