Women Coffee Producers

ASMUCAFE stands for Asociación de Mujeres Agropecuarias de Uribe, an organization of women farmers and landowners in El Tambo, a municipality within Cauca. The women’s mission as an association is to improve their families’ quality of life through coffee farming and to contribute positively to their community by working together and sharing resources, knowledge, and support. “Our work is determined by our values such as responsibility, honesty, commitment, respect, solidarity, and competitiveness,” they say. A special price premium is added to this coffee which is used towards projects aimed at female empowerment in the association.

The coffee, all of which is of Castillo or Colombia variety, is picked as purple (Castillo) or bright red (Colombia) cherry, and undergoes a somewhat unusual “double” fermentation process, as the women describe it: First, the cherries are left in the loading hoppers for 14 hours, then they are depulped in the afternoons and evening hours and placed into traditional open fermentation tanks for another 10 hours. Then they are washed three to four times before being dried either in parabolic dryers or in the sun for 8–12 days

ARGCAFEE (Association de Transformadores y Comercializadores de Cafe Especiales de Argelia Cauca) is an association that started in 2014 with only 17 member producers, all of whom were committed to finding a better market for their coffee than the commercial one they were delivering to—both in search of higher prices and a better showcase for the quality of their coffee. As Argelia is relatively remote, it had been hard for the small farmers in the area to reach the marketplace and have leverage in their selling. Through their work, however, the association grew to over 230 members, about 150 of whom are presently active in farming and delivering lots to the association.

The community’s history has been eclipsed by armed conflict and illicit crop production, but ARGCAFEE is reshaping this narrative through the commerce of coffee. Collectively, they are implementing sustainable production techniques through training, commercializing member coffees and fostering buyer connections, drawing youth into the industry through education at ITARG (El Instituto Tecnico Argcafee), and creating sustainable and legal pathways to prosperity through their Women Producer and Coca Substitution programs.

This lot was developed with the women producers of ARGCAFEE. 78 women contribute to this program, with another 44 communicating intentions to join. The Women Producer program is designed to identify and incentivize the many women within the coffee industry. Along with this, this coffee is also part of the Coca Substitution Program.

Coffees from the women members of CODECH were among the earliest catalysts for the creation and expansion of our Women Coffee Producer program. CODECH (Coordinadora de Organizaciones de Desarrollo de Concepcion Huista) is a second-level cooperative that comprises 10 member organizations; it was founded in 1998 in an effort to provide alternative development opportunities within the community of Concepcion Huista, Huehuetenango, Guatemala.

One of CODECH’s primary objectives is to increase women’s equity, and the association also provides services and support for members such as educational and professional workshops, medical attention, correspondence classes, agriculture extension services, and self-esteem and leadership forums.

The associations of CODECH separate coffee from the participating women members, who each own and/or manage their own farms. The women are paid a premium for their coffee, and they have agreed as a group to apply half of the premium to health-care programs and workshops specifically targeting the high infant-mortality rate in Concepcion Huista.

In 2005, six women members of the CESMACH cooperative banded together in an effort to integrate more of the group’s women into educational workshops about coffee cultivation, and to highlight the contributions these women were making to the management and labor on their family farms while their husbands—many of whom had emigrated to the U.S.A. in search of work—held the official title of CESMACH “member” on paper. The women in that small revolutionary group realized that in order to create more equity among the group and empower their fellow women farmers, that practice and the leadership of the organization needed to change.

Within a year, the group had grown to 23 women heads of household and farmer owner/managers, all of whom had begun the process of transferring their memberships with CESMACH from their husbands’ names to their own. The women became an active and dynamic part of CESMACH’s leadership, and created a mark called Café Femenino in order to brand their coffee.

In 2011, Cafe Imports senior green-coffee buyer Piero Cristiani was sourcing coffees in Mexico with CESMACH and was intrigued by the number of women he saw delivering coffee for processing. He proposed the Women Coffee Producers program to the organization, incorporating the price premium per pound of green coffee purchased from the women members. Over the course of the program with CESMACH, the women have applied their premiums to projects like vegetable gardens, and health-care initiatives to fight the predominance of cervical cancer among the women.

Today, the cooperative has more than 225 women members, some of whom are widows, single mothers, private landowners, or women whose husbands have left Chiapas in search of work in the U.S. and Canada. CESMACH represents 32 communities within Sierra Madre, Chiapas, and each smallholder owns a plot of land that averages 4 hectares or fewer.

Cooperativa RAOS (Regional de Agrícultores Orgánicos de la Sierra) has been a producer partner of Cafe Imports since 2015, and in addition to sourcing bulked coffees from its core membership of 270 farmers, we source lots from 77 women coffee producers who are active members.

RAOS’s leadership is determined to increase gender equity among its members, specifically with regards to legal complications related to gender-based restrictions on owning farmland, as well as the greater degree of difficulty women often face in security credit and financing before the harvest. Cooperativa RAOS holds regular gender assemblies to discuss the women’s needs as well as to ensure their voices are heard and considered, and the organization also holds educational workshops for its members that are open to all.

The women of Cooperativa RAOS grow a combination of Bourbon, Caturra, Catuai, IHCAFE 90, Pacas, and Typica.

GARMINDO cooperative’s full name is the Gayo Arabica Mahkota Indonesia Cooperative, and it is an association started in 2019 with 625 smallholder farmer members, each of whom owns less than 1.5 hectares of farmland, on average. The association was founded by our partner Sakdan, who owns and operates the Bergandal Farm and Mill: He and his brothers were raised in a coffee-producing family and have long been supporters of their fellow farmers.

This coffee comes from the women coffee producers subgroup. A price premium is paid directly to the women above and beyond the quality premium. The women members typically bring their coffee in cherry form to a collection point where it is depulped, fermented underwater for 12 hours, and given a pre-dry before undergoing the Wet-Hulling process. The coffee is dried on patios and typically takes 2–3 days under sunny conditions. It can take up to 7 days when the weather is rainy and humid.

The Women Coffee project with Lima Coffees puts a price premium paid directly to the contributing women farmers for each lot. Lima Coffees brings together 110 coffee-growing families led by women, heads of their groups. relatives and representatives of their own farms.

This program was born with the purpose of motivating coffee growers, and future generations of women, to empower themselves and take the initiative to improve their quality of life, to excel and make a sustainable life based on agriculture, reaching their full potential in the areas in which they wish to develop, having as a starting point the production of sustainable coffee.

This organization seeks to provide the necessary tools to make this possible.

There’s a workgroup made up of 2 representatives of the group of associated women of Lima Coffee

Representante – Isabel Paz Correa – Zona: Chirinos

Secretario – Olga Calle Chumacero – Zona: Ihuamaca

100% of the premiums go toward the women of the two groups, with 70% earmarked to help organize the group, and the other 30 percent to develop a program for empowerment of women at work, a program for economic development, savings and investment, a program of leadership development and leadership training, and a program for comprehensive well-being and gender equality.

Fundación Agraria y Ambiental Para el Desarrollo Sostentible (FUDAM) is a 300-member association of organic-certified (and Rainforest Alliance–certified) growers that was founded in the year 2000 by just seven producers who shared a vision of sustainable agriculture as well as environmental protection and development. This group of smallholders lives in and around the small municipality of La Unión in Nariño, where the terrain differs greatly from in other coffee-growing areas like Cauca: Instead of walking up from the town to the farms, as elsewhere, here the towns are at such high elevation that the farms are typically lower elevation, surrounded by high peaks and rough road.

This specific lot is produced by FUDAM’s own Manos de Mujeres, a subgroup of women that are all members of FUDAM.

FUDAM’s membership believes firmly in the principles of sustainability that drove them to band together in the first place. When asked recently why the group continues to farm organically despite mounting pressure to rely on chemical inputs, the association’s leadership explained, “This is just how we live, these are our values and our way of life.”

The farmers pick their coffee during the day and depulp it in the afternoon, typically fermenting the lots for 16–24 hours dry. The coffees are generally washed two or three times before being dried either in small “casa elbas,” mechanical dryers, or parabolic dryers. The mechanical drying takes between 25–40 hours, while the other drying structures can take up to 15 days.

Tierra Madre is produced exclusively by 125 women coffee producers in Jinotega, who receive a premium based on coffee that meets a high-quality standard. Aldea Global promotes the sale of Coffee produced by Associated women under the Tierra Madre label. This coffee is a blend from multiple women-owned farms. Cherries are picked when fully ripe, depulped, fermented overnight, washed, and then placed on raised beds and patios to dry.

Aldea Global provides its small farmer members with technical assistance, micro-crediting, and marketing services. In 2013, Aldea Global had 1,200 members, but by focusing on the aforementioned areas, its membership has rapidly expanded to more than 13,000 members, of which 34% are women. As of 2020, Aldea Global works in more than 700 rural communities. A general assembly of small farmer delegates elects a board of directors: president, vice-president, treasurer, secretary, and three directors. In addition, Aldea Global has an oversight and strategic credit committee.
Aldea Global educates producers on agroecological practices such as in-row tillage, diversified cropping, soil and water conservation. They also prioritize marketing to help producers move up the value chain. Aldea Global increased its small farmer members’ combined coffee sales from USD 6 million to USD 17 million from 2013 to 2020 through their programs: Organic, Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, UTZ, Direct Trade, and Tierra Madre (women-produced coffee). From 2013 to 2022, specialty coffee exports to the U.S. and Europe grew from 68 containers to 452 containers. This progress is a testament to what a strong, producer-led organization can do to strengthen coffee-growing communities.
Aldea Global’s specialty producer division is made up of 4,863 smallholders. 998 of those are women. The average farm size is 5 hectares.