Analyses of the vulnerability of farm populations and food  systems to exogenous change, whether in relation to climatic extremes, market shocks, epidemics or other concerns, have  typically been approached through a focus on the place of  food production or the specific sub-sector exposed to stress.  Relatively little attention has been paid to the ways in which national institutions, history and social expectations transform  the same signals of global change into very different  outcomes in distinct geographic contexts. The channels that  convey signals of change from the global to the local may also work in reverse, connecting the responses and choices of  households in one geographic context to outcomes and  choices of other households in quite distant places. We draw  from recent case studies of farm-level vulnerability and  livelihood security in Mexico and Vietnam to demonstrate that  coffee smallholders' independent responses to the risks and opportunities associated with global scale economic and  environmental change, are teleconnected and thus can create feedbacks which in turn affect the present and future  vulnerabilities of other smallholders around the globe.