Women in Coffee

Written by Megan Bassett
Interviews by Ana Pisoni

The United Nations declared 2026 “The International Year of the Woman Farmer” to celebrate and raise awareness of the often unseen work of women in agriculture. In Chiapas, where the green beans that become Café Mam coffee are grown, small-scale producers, many from Mam, Tsotsil, Tseltal, and other native communities, organized into cooperatives for protection from corporate exploitation and for control of access to markets.

In the 36 years since Café Mam’s founding, producers have leveraged this collective organization and made Mexico a global leader in shade-grown, organic coffee.  Their organic and fair trade certifications command higher prices, allowing for social projects that protect the environment and strengthen communities. These include projects that empower women producers and recognize the “double workload” they carry in the fields and at home.

During Café Mam’s 2026 visit to Chiapas, Ana Pisoni sat down with 15 women with varying skills and cultures, who share an intimate knowledge of the lessons and challenges of producing coffee on the steep hillsides of the Sierra Madre Mountains. What follows are a few stories of these women whose leadership has helped to open up space to embrace and utilize the strengths of women in coffee. 

We begin with Silvia Roblero Torres, an Agronomist and producer, raised in the coffee fields of the community of Puerto Rico, in the buffer zone of El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve. She created Mexico’s first women-produced coffee initiative. She and Ana sat down to talk at Esperanza Café in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, which Silvia co-founded. She is also co-founder of Alma del Campo consulting group, which helps producers with all facets of production and sales.

"I was the first woman in my community to complete a professional degree,” Silvia began. Having witnessed her father taken advantage of by coyotes (loan-shark intermediaries for big coffee), she studied Agricultural Sciences to help, but her expertise was met with skepticism because she is a woman. Determined, Silvia took a position with a women-focused project in a local cooperative."

"In 2003, we saw the needs of single mothers, whose husbands had emigrated, or who were widows. They were (cooperative) members, but… they had no voice or vote." She soon also discovered many unattended women’s health issues. When Silvia met people working in women’s health at an international coffee conference, she seized the opportunity to partner with them.

In most communities, women did not have the right to inherit land. It takes a full year to produce coffee beans, but there is just one annual payday. Some women confided that their husbands had spent the family's income on alcohol. Silvia shared, “For me, it was important that women learned to manage and administer their own plots, their own coffee. And that's why we began our ‘women in coffee’ program.” This program gives participating women producers access to political and economic benefits, including legal rights to the land, leadership positions within the cooperatives, financial and business decision-making power, and direct payment at a fair price.

They began selling this coffee to international buyers in 2007 and initiated domestic sales in Mexico in 2014. Thanks to Silvia’s leadership, they received the national award for “Women Entrepreneurs in Coffee” in 2015, presented by President Enrique Peña Nieto. The project has inspired similar efforts in other Mexican coffee-producing regions. Silvia added, “Every time I see a package (of women’s coffee), it's very joyful…(it represents) a lot of work… by producers who, well, let's say, broke the rules and wanted to promote something new.”

Ana also spent time with producer Rosa Gomez Hernandez from the community of Salvador Urbina, in the Jaltenango de la Paz region of Chiapas. Rosa is a member-owner of Finca Triunfo Verde coffee cooperative and has been farming for 22 years. Her nine acres provide an average annual yield of 7,280 pounds of green coffee beans. She also grows guineo bananas, oranges, and avocados.

Rosa participates in FinMujer, a community-based financial initiative her cooperative created to foster long-term financial stability for producer member families. FinMujer provides low-cost loans, builds savings habits, and funds farm and home improvements to strengthen the family economy and empower women’s economic independence.

Rosa recently received a solar-powered dehuller (a machine that removes the coffee cherry from the bean), a change that is transforming both her work and daily life. When we asked what had changed for her as a small-scale farmer, she shared: “We didn’t have anything—we started from scratch, planting all our land with coffee plants. With a lot of hard work, we were able to build a home. In recent years, we’ve been facing the impacts of climate change, and the new solar-powered dehuller has made a big difference. The gas-powered dehullers are bad for the environment—loud and smelly. Now we have lighting inside our home; we don’t have to pay electricity bills, and our work is much easier. It’s a win-win for our family and for the environment.”

Solar power for Finca Triunfo Verde is partially funded by Café Mam’s Climate Change Mitigation Fund.

Silvia Herrera is the Assistant General Manager and Finance Manager of Union de Ejidos y Comunidades San Fernando coffee cooperative, and an award-winning coffee producer of 15 years. Her cooperative represents producers from 9 municipalities, including her hometown of Nuevo San Luis. Her 14-acre (5.6 hectares) farm hosts Geisha, Tupi, and AnaCafe 14 coffee varieties, with an average production of 15 to 18 100-pound sacks per hectare.

“I’ve been producing coffee for as long as I can remember. We would play around the farm, picking coffee cherries, also drying them.” Silvia stopped working to pursue a degree in international business with a focus on the social economy (cooperatives, mutual societies, NGOs, social enterprises, and benefit corporations). She also studied agricultural techniques to better help producers.

Silvia clarified that this career isn't just about agriculture. “It's also about fairness and fair trade. I’m the daughter of two teachers, and I know I wouldn’t be able to see coffee production the way I do now or feel as passionate about it without that background. I don’t just worry about coffee production; I really worry about the impact we have on every member’s life in terms of what we do here professionally at the co-op. It helps others in their personal life, which is why I always see agriculture … as a way we connect with people and nature.”

When asked about lessons learned producing coffee, she emphasized the word commitment. “Sometimes I feel like coffee is really cruel because you have one year to improve the quality to improve your production… and if you are lucky and you are doing things properly, you are going to have really good results. You have to respond quickly, adapt quickly, and deal with unpredictable factors that can affect your production. You must be resilient. It’s not that we must stay—we choose to. Those are some of the lessons I’ve learned.” 

Silvia’s accomplishments in coffee are known worldwide. “I have been sending my coffee to the Cup of Excellence in Mexico, and I have won 2nd, 4th, and 7th place myself as a farmer and member of the cooperative. I have pushed and motivated other producers to do the same: invest in quality and invest in production.”

Silvia shared openly about the challenges she has faced. “I think that in general being a woman is a challenge itself in this society. Some men are given space to speak simply because they speak in the ways we’ve been taught to accept, and those spaces are already open to them. So, if I want a place in those conversations, I have to earn it.  Because of that, I’ve educated myself and found people more willing to listen. It’s something I’ve learned to overcome, but it has also made me realize that, as a woman, there is often an added expectation to prove yourself before being heard.”

Silvia has this advice for female farmers, “ I think that if you are committed to improving your work, success will follow as a natural result. But it doesn’t happen instantly; you have to be resilient and patient enough to wait for it.”

Coffee producers in Chiapas today remember how their grandparents were forced to work on foreign-owned coffee plantations, and how they hid seeds to take home to cultivate in their forest gardens following ancestral agricultural methods. Over decades, they built organized cooperatives for collective strength and protection from persistent, merciless exploitation by mega corporations seeking high-quality coffee at unreasonably low prices.

You can learn more about the remarkable producers we partner with by visiting our Small Producer Cooperatives page.