Estimating farmer resilience – the capacity to absorb, adapt and transform to external disturbances – is a primary goal of scientists, policy makers, and the general public, hailed for its potential to bridge disciplines and to unify preventive and responsive measures to global change. Local resilience in internationally traded crops depend not only on farm level dynamics, but also on dynamics across the supply chain, including consumer demand. Production and quality tradeoffs are common in many globally traded perennial crops, and have consequences to the entire supply chain. Our interdisciplinary project uses the coffee supply chain, in Costa Rica, to quantify the impacts of tradeoffs to farmers, institutions and consumers. Previously we demonstrated that production tradeoffs are common and here we build on that work by examining the impact of farming practices on quality tradeoffs that can impact the entire supply chain. The primary tasks to be completed as part of this research experience include farmer and co-op representative surveys, plus data analysis of both interview and coffee production field data.
Qualifications: Applicants are required to be fluent in Spanish and have a stated interest in interdisciplinary research. Background in data preparation and statistics is desirable.