WHY COFFEE?

Coffee is a global, harsh market. Although it’s been considered a necessity for decades all around the world, the value farmers get for their hard work is meagre, even under fair trade certification conditions.

Empowering Smallholding Women Farmers Through Enterprise

The Livelihoods Coffee Program is rooted in the leadership of smallholding women farmers from Guatemala’s Ixil region. Through regenerative farming practices, these women are restoring soil health, building climate resilience, and producing high-quality coffee. Our goal is to connect farmers with buyers willing to pay real prices; going beyond fair trade practices allows farmers’ livelihoods and their communities to thrive.

Through the Mayan Mountain social enterprise—co-founded by Barefoot alumni—we’ve been doing just that for the past 8 years, raising the price farmers receive by at least 30%. By sourcing directly from the same women we train, Mayan Mountain ensures fair pricing, transparent trade, and access to growing markets. Together, we’re building a regenerative supply chain that honours both the earth and the hands that farm it.

COFFEE IN GUATEMALA

Coffee in Guatemala grows in very different micro-climates around the whole country. Barefoot’s coffee is grown by Ixil women farmers in their ancestral homelands, the western highlands. These are mountainous areas, producing high-quality organic “café de Altura” at 1.400 – 1.900 m.s.n.m on very steep hills going up to 32% that is very prone to landslides. Climate change effects on this region are thus dire, putting at risk the livelihoods of thousands of people. That is why environmental stewardship is one of the main axes of our coffee livelihood curriculum.

Every process starts with the soil, even if it’s neglected nowadays. Having a living, nutrient-dense soil that is home to beneficial organisms and a source of synergies is the basis of any regenerative agricultural process. In our coffee livelihood curriculum women learn about the specific care that this crop needs, along with overarching agroecology and agroforestry principles to not only maintain the health and structure of their soil and ecosystems but to regenerate them.

In Guatemala’s rural areas, coffee processing is simple and traditional. Once the coffee grains are dry, they are roasted on the ‘comal’ (an ancestral Central American cooking tool), ground by hand, boiled in a pot and filtered. There is no machinery involved in this handmade process. A significant part of our coffee curriculum consists of showing the women other types of processing, visiting facilities that use industrial machinery to turn ‘pergamino’ into green coffee, an artisan coffee roaster and even a cafe for a coffee brewing and tasting session. Most of the women have never seen an espresso machine nor have they tasted one, but they are given the opportunity at last. This allows them to broaden their horizons and imagine new entrepreneurship possibilities.

 We also share with the farmers knowledge about the global coffee market, of how their cherished beans travel across oceans and have become an essential need in the daily habits of so many people worldwide. By sharing with them the dynamics of this global market, we aim for the women to become aware of how precious and valuable their products and labour are, as part of their empowerment process.

OUR PRODUCTS

We offer organic single-origin specialty coffee from the Ixil mountains of Guatemala, where Ixil women farmers are rewarded beyond fair trade standards.