Wendy Cristina Willis, 2015

Thesis:

Perceptions of shade tree cultivation by coffee farmers in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica

After Humboldt, Wendy went on to work for the American Bird Conservancy and then to be Director of Jocotoco USA, an Ecuadorian conservation NGO

For her thesis in Humboldt'sEnvironment & Community MA program, Wendy used an interdisciplinary approach to investigate how political, economic and ecological factors influence the motivations and constraints for the cultivation of shade trees by coffee farmers in the Jamaica’s Blue Mountains. Utilizing a political ecology framework, she conducted semi-structured interviews with a diverse array of coffee farmers, photo-documented the social landscape of coffee production in the Blue Mountains, and catalogued shade tree diversity for each plot visited. Results from the project can help shape policy, inform farmer extension services intended to advance shade coffee production in Jamaica and contribute to the growing literature on the social ecology of coffee production.