Celebrating the Extraordinary Women Producers of AMACA

The women of the AMACA group were among the first people in their region to focus on and advocate for specialty coffee production. They understood that proper plant care, farming and processing methods would improve the final cup quality, resulting in higher prices and better returns for producers.

The early days were not easy for the group. At the time, the general understanding in the region was that all coffee would receive the same price on the local market, so many people in their community questioned why AMACA’s members were devoting so much time and effort to careful cherry selection and meticulous processing methods.

But the women of AMACA were determined – they worked hard as a collective to improve their coffee quality, and to market and sell their coffees. And they were very quickly rewarded for their efforts. “We’ve been really blessed since the program started,” Luz Marina told us on our visit to El Tambo last November. “We’ve always been able to sell our coffee at much higher prices than the daily market price.”

The group worked hard as a collective to improve their coffee quality, and to market and sell their coffees. They were quickly rewarded for their efforts.

26 years after it was founded, AMACA has 64 motivated and talented members across generations. The group now stands as a symbol of empowerment, social change and community solidarity. Their project has helped bring economic stability to many communities in the region, with a lot of the group’s members acting as the most reliable and primary income earners in their families.

Luz Marina and Luz Mila are still at the helm of the group, and they still have big goals for AMACA’s members, working tirelessly to realise their vision of a sustainable future for female specialty coffee producers in their region. 

It was a true joy and honour for us to meet and spend time with the women of AMACA on our trip to Colombia late last year. The sense of community, camaraderie, deep friendship and shared purpose between the group’s members was palpable; it inspired us and gave us even more motivation to want to continue our partnership with AMACA – to share their beautiful coffees and platform their amazing stories and the work they do with our community of coffee lovers at home.

“Thank you for coming and visiting us over here,” Luz Marina told us at the end of our visit. “It’s hard to imagine you coming all this way. It’s a great joy for us, for you to visit us here, directly where the producers really live, so you can see everything and go back and tell others about where this coffee really comes from, how it was processed, and how it’s treated. That is really significant for us. Thank you for being here, and for working with us. We’re always here, we always work hard. Though we’ve faced many hardships, we always get back up and keep moving forward.”

The sense of community, camaraderie, deep friendship and shared purpose between the women is palpable and inspiring. 

We currently have two delicious coffees from AMACA on offer in our shops. Our Seasonal Blend features AMACA Women’s Coffee, produced by 20 of the group’s members. We also have El Rosal drip bags, produced by Erika Meneses Vásquez. Erika joined AMACA when she was a teenager and, a decade later, is still one of its youngest members.

We hope you enjoy these very special coffees, produced by a group of talented, passionate and determined women producers in Cauca, Colombia. We hope to share AMACA’s coffees – and see the group go from strength to strength – for many years to come.