Moliendo Fino: The Countdown to Care Training 2021 is on!
Last week, for the first time, we hosted a two-part virtual forum, Moliendo Fino. The two sessions were open to all and addressed topics that will be the focus of our Care Training 2021 programme: ‘Women in the Community’, and ‘Adaptation to Climate Change’. Our goal for the forum was to create accessible sessions for smallholder women coffee producers who may be interested in signing up for Care Training, but are unfamiliar with our organisation, to learn more about the work we do.
We chose an approach centred on individual reflections and perspectives, rather than a lecture. This made the sessions more interactive, and producers had the opportunity to ask questions and make comments in real time. Each session featured expert panellists as well as Bean Voyage partner producers, giving a taste (pun intended!) of what can be expected from this year’s programme, which begins next month.
Our first session, ‘Women in the Community’, featured panellists Xinia Chavés Quiros (ICAFE), Olivia Sylvester (UPeace), and Zeidy Enid Selles Paez (one of our partner smallholder coffee producers). During the discussion, panellists offered their perspectives regarding gender, masculinity and femininity, and safe spaces.
Following this, they turned to the importance of involving men and younger generations in discussions around gender equity in coffee. We also discussed the significant role that traceability plays in working towards gender equity in the industry, by affording the women in the industry visibility and recognition for the work; an objective that goes to the core of Bean Voyage’s mission.
Our second forum session focused on the intersection of climate change and womxn coffee producers, this time featuring Vanessa Rojas Herrera (ICAFE), Adrián Martínez (La Ruta del Clima), and Monserrat Prado (one of our partner smallholder coffee producers). In recent months, many of our partner producers have mentioned witnessing fluctuations in harvests, flowering, and rainfall. With all of these issues being only compounded by the pandemic, we wanted to create a space for sharing experiences and solutions in order to help producer families to become more resilient going forward.
We started by discussing the origins of climate change, before addressing the impact of climate change specifically on coffee farms. With pests and coffee plant diseases becoming increasingly common and aggressive, and rainfall and flowering seasons becoming less predictable, the question of how to mitigate these risks has never been more relevant. In this context, it is particularly important to consider measures that are environmentally friendly and sustainable and yet also accessible to smallholder coffee producers, many of whom have limited resources and cannot invest in expensive schemes.
These challenges are why we created our Care Training programme, with the aim of providing producers with the training necessary to overcome constantly-evolving issues. It is impossible to rely solely on knowledge and techniques from previous generations when the circumstances of farming, and of the climate itself, are changing. Through discussions and opportunities like this for sharing best practices, we hope that more smallholder producers will be able to take steps towards both protecting their farm and the planet for future generations.
A big thank you to everyone who took part in and watched our sessions! Curious to find out more? You can find the two recorded sessions (in Spanish) on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/beanvoyage/
If you are a smallholder woman coffee producer in Costa Rica, or know someone who is, there are 6 days left to sign up to take part in Care Training 2021!
Written by Alice Mee
Edited by Kayla Sippl
