Mujer Caficultora 2.0 FW

The Caficultora 2.0 program is an initiative focused on socially and economically empowering female coffee producers in Cauca, Colombia. The program currently involves 50 female coffee growers and indirectly benefits an additional 150 people through the additional family income generated by the participants.

Through CAFICAUCA (Cooperativa de Caficultores del Cauca), producers learn about the commercialized roasting. Their involvement equips them with a wide range of skills including handling business finances and understanding consumption in the local market.

Caficultura 2.0 uses a mixture of education, agronomic assistance and entrepreneurial experience to empower female growers in all aspects of their lives. Educational sessions cover a wide variety of topics from financial literacy to gender equality. Agronomists with CAFICAUCA provide trainings on proper cherry selection, improving processing and more.

From their roots in 1961 with 297 coffee growers, the Cooperativa de Caficultores del Cauca (CAFICAUCA) has remained focused on economic empowerment for their members. Now, their more than 2,900 members benefit from their value-addition roasting business that captures a larger portion of a coffee’s final value and shares that extra income with producer-members.

In addition to their roasting business, the cooperative provides a plethora of services for its members and their coffee-growing communities. Producers can apply for loans, scholarships and aid from the cooperative as well as purchase fertilizers and other inputs at good prices.

Alongside Nariño and Huila, Cauca is becoming part of the “New Coffee Triangle.”  Named after the Eje Cafetero, the region that was once the heart of Colombia’s coffee production, this New Coffee Triangle takes advantage of the high altitudes from the Andes Mountains and water-rich drainage basins that abound in the region.

In Cauca, most coffee is grown in small plots by rural and largely indigenous communities. More than 90,000 families cultivate approximately 93,000 hectares of coffee across Cauca. The most common varieties are Castillo, Colombia, Caturra, Typica, Bourbon and Tabí.

Like Nariño and Huila, Cauca is emerging from a long history of armed conflict and drug smuggling, which isolated the region and made it difficult to maintain coffee traceability.  

We were excited to contract these microlots from two cooperative in Cauca for the first time this year. Unfortunately, the novel coronavirus outbreak that the World Health Organization declared a pandemic in March 2020, made gathering comprehensive traceability information difficult this year. In the coming season, we hope to work with these producers to expand upon their stories and provide you for with more comprehensive cultivation and processing information.