SOLIDARITY NETWORKS FOR OTHER ECONOMIES
Women Connecting the Networks to Build Other Economies
In Ixhuatlán del Café, Veracruz, México, 800 families grow coffee, producing quality beans that travel from Veracruz to California as part of CAN’s AgroEco Solidarity Supply Network. Organized as a cooperative and supported by CAN partner VIDA-AC, Campesinos en la Lucha Agraria grow agroecological coffee using diversified cropping systems that promote environmental conservation and food sovereignty among small farm families.
When the coffee trade arrived in Ixhuatlán del Café, global supply chains extracted raw materials and labor to the global north, where the majority of wealth generated from coffee remained. Women worked harder to care for degraded ecosystems and feed their families as land shifted from food to coffee production. Women also helped harvest and process coffee beans, yet men maintained control and decision-making power over land management and coffee sales. The extractive economy reorganized family life, with women carrying the brunt of its impacts.
Campesinos en la Lucha Agraria and VIDA have pushed back, creating solidarity networks that center women’s work, care of the earth and keeping wealth generated by the community in the community.
This culminated in May with the inauguration of Cafetería Agroecológica Femcafe! This women-led coffee shop builds on 32 years of collective work. The coffee is sourced from Femcafe, a women-centered coffee brand focused on reorganizing community and economic relationships to mirror the balance they cultivate in their agroecological coffee forests. Women participate directly in growing, harvesting, selling and roasting coffee beans for the local and national market in Mexico, creating visibility of their labor and generating decision-making power over the earnings. With the opening of the coffee shop, Femcafe now offers brewed coffee, continuing to move farmers from selling coffee as a raw material to selling a quality cup of coffee generating higher incomes from their direct sale.
CAN facilitates the AgroEco Solidarity Supply Network that brings coffee from Ixhuatlán del Café to Santa Cruz, supporting transparent communication during price negotiations among producer cooperatives, importer ETICO, and roaster Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Company. We uphold women’s work with the Fund for Women’s Unpaid Labor and foster solidarity among coffee consumers. Participating together in this ongoing work we strengthen, connect and build upon economic practices that center cooperation and solidarity that give way for other economies.
Join CAN this Saturday, December 17,
from 8:00 am – 12:00 pm at the Aptos Farmers Market at Cabrillo College.
Enjoy a cup of coffee from Campesinos en la Lucha Agraria at the AgroEco Youth Collective Coffee Cart, and learn more about our work to build solidarity networks for other economies!
Donate to CAN today.
Every dollar will be matched up to $50,000 and support solidarity networks for other economies!
