Our community has decades of experience collaborating with smallholder coffee farmers and cooperatives in Latin America. Over this time, our work has evolved from focusing mostly on ecological processes in coffee agroecosystems to a transdisciplinary approach grounded in participatory action research (PAR). Here, we highlight our work supporting smallholder farmers and their allies in transforming their shade coffee and food systems into ones that are ecologically sound and socially just.

Our News

Food Sovereignty in the Coffeelands

As part of an IFA-affiliated project and in collaboration with farmers from the CESMACH coffee cooperative, Espora Media, and the Universidad Veracruzana, the new documentary, Todavía se Puede, presents the meaning of conserving the milpa - a traditional Mesoamerican method of growing corn, beans, and other crops - as told from the perspective of farming families in the Sierra Madre de Chiapas. We're happy to share this documentary with you now.

Soil Health in Coffee Agroecosystems

Since 2022, we have been facilitating research on soil health in coffee agroecosystems in Mexico and Guatemala with the CESMACH and ASOBAGRI coffee cooperatives. The objective of the project is to co-produce knowledge about the relationships between the structure of coffee agroecosystems, indicators of soil health, coffee productivity and coffee cup quality. Follow our progress on the project here.

Project Team in Chiapas, Mexico

Conversation about Soil Organisms in Chiapas, Mexico

Project Team in Guatemala

Diversification and Food Security

Our previous research shows that many smallholder coffee farmer households in Central American and Southern Mexican coffee lands experience seasonal food insecurity, or “thin months” (read more here, here, here, here, and here). Our ongoing research in Chiapas has reinforced the multifunctional benefits of shade-coffee agroecosystems, which include the provision of staple crops (corn and beans are inter-cropped when the coffee trees are young) as well as many fruits and wild edible species. The posters on the right display recent products of this research - popular education tools that were developed through a participatory action research process conducted over 5 years in Mexico and Nicaragua.

Agricultural Calendar

Plate of Good Eating

Thought For Food Project Logo


Geographical Areas of Research in Coffee Communities

The map below shows the geographic scope of our work, after which we describe our areas of focus in more detail.


Participatory Action Research

Participatory Action Research (PAR) has been one of the main features of the link between academia and agroecological movements in Latin America. Over the years, the IFA has engaged with coffee producers through PAR approaches. Central tenets of these processes include:

  • Research questions and methodologies are defined collectively by the participants
  • Different types of knowledge are integrated through interactive dialogue
  • Research is oriented to realistic and contextualized actions that could be taken by participants of the process
  • Facilitators intentionally breakdown traditional hierarchies and democratize power over the research process
  • Researchers commit to maintaining long-term, trustworthy relationships with producer organizations and families
  • Researchers recognize their own subjectivity and positionality while acknowledging the validity of perspectives and identities of the research participants

People from IFA

Ernesto MéndezJanica Anderzen, Alejandra Guzmán Luna, Martha Caswell, and Andrew Gerlicz, among others.