Why We Try to Source From Women-Owned Farms (When We Can)
When we started looking at coffee and tea sourcing, we quickly learned that most of the world's smallholder coffee farms — the farms that produce specialty-grade coffee — are family operations. And on many of those family farms, the woman of the house does most of the agricultural work, the post-harvest processing, and the bookkeeping, even when her husband or father is listed as the farm's "owner" on the export paperwork.
The same is true in tea. In Kenya, India, and Sri Lanka, women do most of the plucking and the processing work. They rarely own the land or the cooperative. They often don't have decision-making power over pricing or contracts.
A few years ago, importers and cooperatives started trying to formalize "women-produced" or "women-owned" coffee and tea as a category. The idea was simple: if women are doing most of the work, they should be recognized as producers, paid directly, and given a seat at the table when prices and contracts are negotiated.
We try to buy from these cooperatives when we can. Sometimes we can. Sometimes we can't. This post is about why we try, what we've learned, and where the limits are.
What "women-owned" or "women-produced" actually means
There's no single definition. Different certifications and cooperatives use different criteria. The most common ones:
- The coffee or tea was produced by an all-women cooperative. Every member of the co-op is a woman. The co-op is led by women. The revenue goes to women producers.
- The coffee or tea was produced on a farm where a woman is the named owner. The land title, the export license, and the cooperative membership are in a woman's name.
- The revenue from this lot goes specifically to women producers. The coffee is grown on a mixed-gender co-op, but this particular lot is set aside so the women who grew it get paid directly, not via the household.
All three are legitimate. The third is the most common in coffee, because most specialty coffee comes from mixed cooperatives and it's hard to find a single-gender lot.
We don't require a certification. Most certifications cost the farmer money to obtain, and a lot of the women-produced coffee we buy doesn't have a third-party stamp on it. We trust the importer's relationship with the co-op, and we ask questions.
Why we try to do this
The argument most people make is an ethical one: women are doing the work, they should get the recognition and the pay. We agree with that argument, but it's not the only reason we try.
The quality argument is just as strong. In our experience — and in the experience of most of the importers we work with — women-produced lots are often higher quality than mixed-gender lots from the same region. There are a few reasons:
- Post-harvest processing is where quality lives. Washing, drying, fermenting, sorting — these are the steps that separate specialty-grade coffee from commodity-grade. In many co-ops, women do most of this work. When women are recognized as the producers and paid based on quality, the quality goes up.
- Decision-making on quality investments. When women have decision-making power over co-op revenue, they often invest in processing equipment, drying tables, and storage — the things that improve quality most.
- Long-term thinking. Women producers we've talked to tend to think in multi-year horizons. They invest in soil health, in shade trees, in farm renovation. These are the investments that produce great coffee over decades, not just one good harvest.
These are general patterns, not universal truths. There are excellent male producers and there are women-led co-ops that produce commodity-grade coffee. But the correlation is strong enough that we pay attention.
Where we buy women-produced coffee
We currently buy from two women-led cooperatives:
1. A women's cooperative in Huehuetenango, Guatemala. This is a small all-women group that produces washed bourbon and pacamara at 1,500–1,800 meters. We've been buying from them for two years. The cup is clean, bright, slightly floral — a different profile from most Guatemalan coffees, which tend to be chocolate-forward.
2. A women's tea cooperative in Kenya. Black tea, mostly CTC-style for the local market but with a small specialty lot for export. The tea is bright, brisk, and more savory than most Kenyan blacks. We're still working on getting a reliable supply — the co-op is small and the export logistics are complicated.
We're also in conversation with a women's group in Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia, but we haven't committed to a purchase yet. The lot we're interested in is tiny — 8 bags — and we need to figure out how to price it for our customers before we commit.
Where we can't
The honest version: most of our coffee doesn't come from women-led cooperatives. Three reasons:
1. Supply is small. Women-led cooperatives produce a tiny fraction of the world's specialty coffee. If we limited ourselves to women-produced coffee, we'd have maybe 2–3 origins available, not the 8–10 we'd need to give our customers real variety.
2. Pricing doesn't always work. Women-produced lots are often priced higher than comparable mixed-gender lots — sometimes 10–30% higher. When we're already pricing our coffee at $19.99–$24.99, a 30% premium on the green side cuts our margin to almost nothing. We can't sustainably buy all-women lots at scale without raising prices.
3. The relationships take time. Sourcing from women-led co-ops requires a different kind of relationship with the importer. We need to know who the producers are, how the co-op is governed, how the money flows. That takes years to build, not a single coffee-buying season.
We're honest about the limits. We try. We don't always succeed. And we don't pretend that buying a few bags of women-produced coffee makes us an "ethical" company. It doesn't. It makes us a company that's trying.
Why we don't make a big deal about it
Some roasters market their women-produced coffee aggressively. "Women-owned." "Empowering female farmers." "Coffee that lifts up women."
We don't do that, and here's why: the women producing these coffees don't usually love being marketed that way. They want to be known for the quality of their coffee, not for their gender. They want the same price premiums that any great coffee gets — not a "women's coffee premium" that can read as patronizing.
When we feature women-produced coffee on our site, we mention it. We don't hide it. But we don't make it the headline. The coffee is the headline. The producer is the producer. We try to write about it the same way we'd write about any other great coffee.
What we'd change if we had more leverage
If we were a larger roaster buying 10x the volume, we'd push harder on a few things:
- Direct contracts with women-led cooperatives. Skip the importer when possible. Pay the co-op directly. Build a multi-year relationship.
- Pricing transparency. Make sure the women producers see exactly what we paid and what we sold it for. Most specialty importers already do this, but not all.
- Long-term commitment. Don't buy a single lot as a one-off and disappear. Commit to 2–3 years of purchasing at a known volume.
We're not at the scale where we can do all this. But we're watching the importers and co-ops that do, and we're learning from how they structure their relationships.
The takeaway
We try to buy from women-led cooperatives when we can. Sometimes we can. The coffee is often excellent, and the relationships are more durable than commodity sourcing.
But we don't oversell the effort. We buy what we can. We pay fairly. We don't market it as philanthropy. We treat the producers as producers — skilled, professional, and worth paying well for.
If you're a coffee buyer trying to do the same thing, our advice: start with one cooperative. Build a relationship. Ask questions. Pay a premium if the quality justifies it. Don't try to convert your entire menu overnight.
— Seraphina, Cozy Sips
For more on how we approach sourcing, our how we pick which coffees to stock post walks through the full set of criteria — quality, cost, supply reliability, and producer relationships.