Smallholder coffee growers profiting from cooperatives in Mexico

In the south of Mexico, small-scale farmers are responding to changing climate conditions by working together as cooperatives to implement new practices and support long-term climate resilience. 

For many people living within and around the slopes of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas – one of the world’s last remaining cloud forests, which was declared a UNESCO Biosphere due to its ecological importance – growing shade-grown coffee represents their main source of income. 

Livelihoods in Mexico’s most important coffee producing region have been under threat, however, due to the effects of climate change. Increasingly erratic conditions have devastating impacts on coffee production, with a decrease from 138,000 tons to 69,000 tons recorded over one two-decade period. This halving of yields is mainly attributed to changes in precipitation and temperature patterns, together with extreme weather events, which impacted soil fertility and production.

Changing climate conditions in the cloud forests have in turn led to an increase in diseases and pests. Outbreaks of coffee rust in 2011 and 2012 in Central America and Mexico, for instance, were attributed to climate change, as changing rainfall patterns and higher temperatures shortens the time it takes for plants with rust to become infectious, thereby increasing the virulence of the fungus.

A coffee rust epidemic outbreak in the Chiapas region in 2013 severely damaged farmers’ livelihoods, increasing debt and social inequality. Unfortunately, some attempts by farmers to adapt – including by shifting to other varieties of coffee, intensifying production methods, and an increasing dependency on external agrochemical inputs – are potentially maladaptive in the long term, as they present a further threat to the very fragile ecosystems on which people depend.

Over the years, smallholder coffee producers, which had an average of two hectares of land per family, formed associations, each made up of between 100 and 500 members. These associations then came together at a second level, creating larger cooperatives, consisting of up to 1,000 producers. By working as cooperatives, smallholders were able to adapt by using alternative forms of pest and disease management such as pruning, opting for disease tolerant local varieties of coffee, and utilizing microorganisms to enhance soil quality and plant nutrition so that their coffee plants were better defended against diseases.

Cooperatives also provided support in other ways, such as providing access to affordable loans and emergency support and credit, including community savings. These savings help members during lean periods outside of the harvest season, as coffee producers are particularly reliant on harvest profits for the entire year. In addition, farmers benefited from cooperatives’ efforts to promote livelihood diversification, including by developing new value chains related to ecotourism and honey production.

A special focus was placed on challenges faced by vulnerable groups, with cooperatives working with youth groups on ecotourism, creating women’s organizations for women coffee producers, and establishing a women’s financial institute to provide loans at low interest rates to help incubate new businesses enterprises. Today, working groups within cooperatives on these new value chains are legally established cooperatives in their own right, allied with the original cooperatives. 

“The coffee rust could have caused more damage, or we would have been less capable to respond, if the cooperative focused only on coffee for survival,” says a member of the Comon Yaj Noptic Cooperative (which means ‘we think together’), based in the Nuevo Paraiso, La Concordia region of the Chiapas. “We need to keep analyzing potential climate impacts and adapting, to have the capacity to react.”

The cooperatives also offer technical extension services to producers to improve coffee yields and quality and provide support to access basic services related to health, education, sanitation, electricity, and communication. Youth from the community receive training from external experts in agroecological practices, which means they can become trainers in their own right and help build community nurseries and share strategies to improve prices.

“It’s not just about producing and selling coffee, it’s ensuring through our work the satisfaction of our collective needs such as health, education, and environment that is what has always inspired our work,” says the member of Comon Yaj Noptic.

Cooperatives also prove beneficial to smallholders in other ways. One such example is sustainability certifications, including organic, Fair Trade, and bird-friendly certifications. By signing up, farmers are not only able to enhance coffee sales and profits while conserving flora and fauna, but also benefit from accessing social premiums offered by some of the Fair-Trade networks.