ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the crises which drove the white planters out. The proposed solution to the 'netting' crisis quickly exposed all the contradictions to which the colonial coffee industry was subject. The Administration was quite unprepared for this boom in smallholder coffee. It was concerned to ensure that the boom not turn into a decline in enthusiasm for cash crop development if smallholders experienced disappointment in coffee, as they had done with other cash crops. White planters in the coffee industry of colonial Papua New Guinea could not directly exploit smallholders, so they had to go outside the realm of production. The planters also failed in their programme of incorporation, of leading national growers to adopt the interests of the planters through the middle peasant strategy.
