1. Business Description
In 1993, the Coordinating Association of Rural Women of La Paz (COMUCAP) was established. It is a regional organization that emerged through the participation of 7 women and from a program on Radio San Miguel. It was formed with a vindicative character, in defense of the rights of rural women and offering legal assistance services in the department of La Paz, as well as seeking to promote economic development actions to provide a sustainable livelihood to each of the member families. Currently, the organization is made up of 256 Lenca women, most of them coffee producers, members of the Coordinators of Rural Women of La Paz, which achieved its legal incorporation in 1996, made up of 16 grassroots groups distributed in the municipalities of Márcala, Chinacla, Cabañas and Santa Elena, all located in the Department of La Paz.
The business revolves mainly around the collection, added value, local marketing and export of coffee. It has its own facilities for the wet and dry processing of coffee and is venturing into the processing of Aloe vera. COMUCAP's vision is to work for the technical and economic sustainability of grassroots organizations, improve the living conditions of families based on the production and added value of organic coffee and reduce domestic violence.
2. Production and services
Each group produces its own products and all are sold in the Comucap store. There is a group that makes soap and shampoo, another that makes orange, blackberry and cape gooseberry wines, and there are 8 groups that produce aloe vera in a total area of 8 manzanas. There are also groups that produce honey, from native bees and apis. Some groups make jellies and preserves. Additionally, in the store they sell small bags of fertilizers as samples so that the farmers can try them, and then they can request a larger quantity if they like the product. Almost all the members have coffee on their own family plots in addition to what is on the community plots. Within the collective plots there are also family gardens for the houses that are nearby, for their own consumption and for sale on market days. Each base group also has rural banks that started because financial aid was sorely needed. These banks operate independently of Comucap. They also have free technicians to visit the members and support them with the management of their plots and collective plots.
COMUCAP has exported organic coffee to Germany through fair trade, with Protected Designation of Origin (PDO). They work with the following seals: Fair Trade, Designation of Origin and Organic IMOCERT, FAIR TRADE USA. They have infrastructure for processing aloe vera, organic fertilizers and, in the case of coffee, wet and dry processing processes, as well as green, roasted and ground coffee. They have markets in the United States, Germany and Spain to sell their organic coffee.
3. Production systems
They manage SAF in the coffee plantations, in the plots in different regions, there are some with timber, fruit trees, shade, trees that provide nutrients, this has been done for a long time. In the aloe fields it is monoculture with living barriers of lemon grass and San Miguel sword. They have an area of 12 acres of forest conservation, 3 acres of aloe cultivation. They do a reforestation campaign every year. They have aliving and dead arreras, windbreak barriers, handling sheet metal with Cuma (machete pando), no longer with a hoe, vegetal cover of the soil, contour planting, infiltration ditches on slopes. Aloe vera peel is used as fertilizer. There are no polluting residues, even coffee grounds are used to make bocashi. Everything is reused. In all the plots there are practices, both in the collective plots and in those of the women's groups. They do not use chemical inputs, for the certification and for the awareness of the family's health. It is the policy of the organization.
4. Main challenges
Despite their track record in organic agriculture, producers' farms need more technical assistance in their agroforestry systems with coffee.
4. Message to women producers
