The traditional attire worn by the pioneering women of the Sat Kajpel Antsetik Cooperative unexpectedly matched the rich red colour of the coffee berries they were picking when Jenna Foxton photographed them around the town of San Cristobal de las Casas, in southern Mexico’s Chiapas Highlands region.
Foxton travelled there with an all-women team from Yallah, a Cornwall-based coffee roastery with a vision to promote social, economic and environmental prosperity through its business, and Ensambles, a green coffee exporter dedicated to fostering strong female relationships in the coffee industry. The group shared a coffee with the producers, who grow, harvest, clean and dry coffee berries, as well as maintain their farm in Tenejapa, before being shown around the female-run plantation.
The Sat Kajpel Antsetik Cooperative, whose name literally translates to “coffee with a woman’s face”, is composed of 58 women from the region’s indigenous Tseltal community. The cooperative is supported by COFEMO, which, founded more than 30 years ago, is dedicated to closing gender gaps, improving access to education and empowering marginalised communities in Chiapas.
Foxton and the Yallah team heard from the women about the struggles they’ve faced as female producers in a predominantly male industry.
The state of Chiapas is Mexico’s leading coffee producer, exporting beans to Europe, Japan and the US. The Mexican government estimates that 61 per cent of producers in the region are indigenous, but – as in many places across the globe – women face inequality in the sector, particularly when it comes to labour, land ownership and income distribution.
These women face numerous challenges as coffee producers, not least because, historically, women did not have property rights in the region. In Chiapas today, only 27.7 per cent of women hold deeds to their land
"They explained how they have to juggle family life with running the coffee farm, all while having far less access to education and land than their male counterparts,” says Millie Wood, a Yallah Coffee staff member, and one part of the team to visit the cooperative.
Before the cooperative in San Cristobal was founded, many of the women in this community did not own their own land. With its support, though, some of them successfully negotiated with men in the community to obtain ownership of some wasteland, which has since been converted into a coffee plantation.
"What surprised me the most was hearing about how the women have to wake up at 3am,” Wood says, “preparing food for the day and maintaining household jobs, before walking up the mountain – babies in tow – to come back down again, along with all the coffee they picked."
"Their resilience and dedication to improving their livelihoods for the sake of their family and their community is inspirational. It makes you appreciate just how much work goes into producing the coffee that we take for granted as a daily staple.
"We often have the view that women who are involved in coffee production have chosen this path for themselves,” Wood says. “This may be the case for some women, but it is not always that simple. To a large extent, women farm coffee out of necessity, rather than choice."
"But without the input of female coffee growers, the industry could miss out on valuable innovations and the expertise needed to ensure high-quality coffee production. Their dedication, hard work and experience in coffee cultivation contribute to the industry’s growth and success. A woman's contribution to the coffee supply chain is in no way inferior to male contributions."
The Lowdown
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Single Origin Trust coffee, grown by the female producers of COFEMO in Chiapas, Mexico is available to buy from yallah.co.uk
Single Origin Trust coffee, grown by the female producers of COFEMO in Chiapas, Mexico is available to buy from yallah.co.uk
