Cafe Femenino: Female Produced Coffee

If you are a serious coffee drinker, there is no better moment than the one when you deeply inhale the aroma of the first cup of the day. But have you ever thought about where your coffee comes from or how it is produced and who's making it?

Coffee is the second largest traded commodity in the world, and women coffee producers account for 30 percent of the 25 million coffee growers. In Peru, female coffee producers have united and are producing their own coffee brand, Café Femenino. Imported by Organic Products Trading Company, Café Femenino is sold only to companies who are either women-owned or have women in upper management positions.

The Femenino project began with 464 women in Northern Peru. At the first gathering of Women Coffee Producers in 2004 sprang this new idea of "separating their coffee from the rest of the production." Cafe Femenino's concept: women produce the coffee, then the consumer plays a key role in giving right back to the earth in which the beans were grown. With the help of organic and Fair Trade premiums, much progress has been made in recent years to improve life in the expanding number of rural coffee growing communities. Improvements range from better diets, improved sanitation, new wet-processing mills and many, many miles of new roads. Cafe Femenino's goal includes improving general standards of living for rural communities, but especially focuses on women's rights.

Out of the Café Femenino coffee initiative was born the Café Femenino Foundation, a social program whose purpose is to support these women in their efforts to achieve equality, build social and support networks and earn incomes through the production and sale of their coffee. Café Femenino is distributed to more than 80 roasters who pay a premium above the fair trade price. Through the fair price/fair trade certification program the coffee producers are guaranteed a minimum and reasonable price for their certified organic products and are able to establish themselves as not only working women but stable individuals. Today, more than 1500 women in Bolivia, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru are active in the project.