Making a Relational Commodity: Harvesting Coffee and Quality in Vietnam

Paper Abstract: Farming livelihoods and commodity production cannot be explained solely by global patterns and forces: they are molded and textured by commodities themselves. This paper builds a novel framework that unpacks these contingencies through the case of specialty-grade coffee farming in Vietnam, building on anthropologies of commodities and science and technology studies.
      Farming coffee in Vietnam is demanding, precarious work tied to a volatile, inequitable industry. In this sense, it mirrors globally-entangled smallholder agriculture elsewhere. Vietnam is the world’s second-largest coffee producer but as one coffee expert put it, “Vietnam is regarded as the lowest-quality coffee there is” (AFP, 2023). This is due to problems with quality control and the fact that 97% of Vietnam’s production is Robusta, a species considered lower quality than its cousin Arabica. Yet some Vietnamese farmers are now breaking away from this reputation by producing high-quality coffee with desirable tastes and aromas.
      To understand these producers’ livelihoods, this paper proposes the framework of relational commodities: that qualities and value are produced by relations within networks. This paper specifically examines how farmers’ harvesting practices shape such relations; it draws on a year of ethnographic fieldwork with coffee farmers in Vietnam’s Central Highlands (ongoing) examining how coffee’s material, sensorial qualities are produced through ecosystems of coffee trees, fruits, soils, microbes, neighboring crops, farmers and other fauna, as well as value chains of traders, roasters and graders. This analysis shows how some Vietnamese coffee farmers are re-constructing their place in the market, pushing back against an industry that has denigrated their crop.