From Cold War to Cold Brew: Crop Replacement Strategies, Bean Logistics, and Ethnicized Coffee Commerce in Northern Thailand

In the past three decades specialty coffees have gained greater visibility in the high-end consumer marketplace. These coffees include Arabica varieties grown in northern Thailand, the borderlands area of the Golden Triangle. In the 1970s Thai Royal Project initiatives sought to eradicate upland minority groups’ swidden rotational farming and opium cultivation. Despite minorities’ issues of land access, geopolitics of the Cold War, and citizenship challenges, Royal Project crop replacement schemes offered a technical, management-based solution. These projects imposed alternative crops, including avocado, macadamia, and coffee. Through interviews with Akha and Lisu coffee growers, roasters, and marketers in three villages in Chiang Rai Province, supplemented with discussions among neighboring Chinese and Lahu villagers, this paper explores varied coffee livelihoods in the changing context of the uplands. Ethnicized coffee marketing has latched onto royalist and touristic narratives about hill tribes, presenting individuals as culturally quaint loyal subjects who are doing better for the nation by growing coffee. However, these stories occlude Cold War histories, social stratification, and ecological damages resulting from coffee production.