Same Questions, Different Dialogues: Reframing Value by Centering Producers | 25, Issue 24
Writer and anthropologist ALEXA ROMANO and researcher and strategist VERA ESPÍNDOLA RAFAEL draw on two intentional dialogues, held at the Women-Powered Coffee Summit in 2024, to look at the value of dialogue to understand the needs and realities of coffee producers, particularly women.
Introduction by ANDRÉS MONTENEGRO, SCA Sustainability Director
“Dialogue,” David Bohm once wrote, “is a stream of meaning flowing among and through us.” It is not merely a conversation; it is a shared inquiry into how we see, think, and act together. In the global coffee sector—where decisions often orbit far from the realities of those who grow coffee—such inquiry feels both urgent and transformative.
In this article of 25, Alexa Romano and Vera Espíndola Rafael take us to the edges of the system. Through their reflections on two dialogues held in Mexico in 2024, they remind us that deep change rarely begins at the center. It often emerges at the margins of decision-making power in the sector—where producers, especially women, share lived knowledge and strategies for sustaining coffee itself, even as the systems around them fail to recognize their centrality in every link of the value chain.
These dialogues were not advocacy activities; they were spaces for surfacing what lies beneath the visible structures of our sector. Like the iceberg model suggests,[1] most of what shapes our systems—assumptions, values, cultural norms—remains out of sight. In these spaces, producers spoke in ways that made those hidden structures feel tangible. Their words reflected not only the inequities of power but also the possibilities of reclaiming it.
This resonates deeply with Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach: that true empowerment comes not from being granted a voice, but from recognizing one’s own value and agency. It echoes the notion of development as freedom—the expansion of real opportunities to live lives one has reason to value. Here, knowledge is not a tool of domination; it is a pathway to choice.
As both authors show us, such knowledge is both personal and collective. It invites us to move beyond transactional views of value and toward a shared value ecosystem—one that recognizes wisdom in relationships, land, and community. In these edges of dialogue, we catch a glimpse of a coffee sector capable of listening with humility, confronting its hidden structures, and co-creating futures where every voice helps to shape the whole. For the Specialty Coffee Association, this work sits at the heart of our Equitable Value Distribution agenda—an ongoing effort to make those voices integral to how value is defined and shared across our industry. Enjoy the reading and get inspiration to make coffee better, for all.
“We’re not supposed to be here.” The quiet comment, made by a group of coffee producers,[2] as they entered a room filled with sector professionals, captured more than a moment of uncertainty. It reflected a deeper, structural truth.
In the global coffee industry, those who cultivate the product often sit furthest from where decisions are made. Yet these producers came to speak—not to be spoken for. As one producer put it: “Coffee unites us, it is our language. For us, the main strategy is coffee. Together we are stronger.”
These reflections emerged from a workshop on equitable value distribution at the 2024 Women-Coffee Powered Summit in Córdoba, Veracruz, Mexico. Attended by over 70 participants worldwide and facilitated in Spanish (day one) and English (day two), the workshop used a dialogue format inspired by the World Café method.[3] Participants worked in small groups to discuss and present on two key questions: How does gender inequality affect value distribution in the coffee sector? And, how can we better support women to make the coffee sector more equitable?
Both dialogues underscored a profound truth: language extends beyond the verbal; it encompasses cultural and historical contexts, gender dynamics, and power hierarchies that influence who feels empowered to speak and participate. For some, the workshops were a moment of reckoning with what it means to be in “the wrong room,” a space where language and power dynamics can inhibit participation, or in the “right room,” where enough solidarity unites to reframe a dominant point of view.
In the first session, the largest professional cohort comprised self-identified coffee producers from Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Colombia. In contrast to other settings where producers are often spoken “for” or “about,” their voices became the most vocal as they shared stories and strategies. They spoke on many topics, from how tools are made for men’s bodies to how finances are handled without transparency, and how women work alongside their families but are rarely valued for their work. “We have always been here,” one producer said, “but it’s like we’re not in the picture.” These discussions weren’t just about representation; they challenged deeper assumptions: what does value mean for them, who defines it, and how is it distributed? Women producers spoke of their work as being invisible—not because they were silent, but perhaps because the system wasn’t designed to hear them.
The second session, attended by a host of coffee professionals, including roasters, baristas, importers, and producers, took a distinctly different tone to the first. The dialogue focused on broader systems, examining structural barriers and outlining strategies for building a more equitable coffee sector. Participants unpacked issues including wage disparities and lack of gender-equity data.
As attendees ourselves, we felt the dialogues brought to the surface tensions and topics that reflect wider challenges in the coffee sector. We are not coffee producers, but we carry the same conviction: coffee producers—especially women—belong at the center of industry conversations. It’s tempting to believe that across the industry we’re all part of the same discussion, but when reflecting on these dialogues we asked: Are we even starting from the same page? Or from the same language of value?
Rooted in our shared Mexican heritage—our families, language, and the stories that tie us to this region—and shaped by years of listening to and walking alongside farming communities, we’ve come to see just how much knowledge exists outside traditional spaces, and how often that wisdom is overlooked. We wrote this piece, not to speak for anyone, but as an attempt to carry producer voices further, inviting others to build connections and understanding of their sentiments, knowledge, and strategies.
Language and Participation
Discussions in coffee often begin with translation, but language is never only vocabulary. Translation can never provide pure meaning because languages are never equivalent to each other.[4] Language is cultural, emotional, and relational; it shapes and is shaped by “ways of being.”[5]
“Ways of being” are lived realities that form the foundation for how producers relate to their work, their communities, and one another. Language itself, and the language of experience, then, is limited to those who share it. This is where the concept of structures of feeling becomes useful.[6] It refers to the intangible—yet powerful—emotional and social elements that shape how people perceive and respond to the world around them. These structures aren’t intellectual positions or conscious beliefs; they are felt truths, shaped through daily realities. This manifested in a sense of solidarity in the Spanish-language workshop. As one producer noted, “coffee unites us; it connects us to other parts of the world. Coffee is our language.”
Yet, producers’ language and voices often go unrecognized in global coffee spaces where fluency in English, or alignment with industry jargon, is often equated with authority. As a result, the terms of participation in coffee discourse often privilege one form of knowledge expression, limiting whose voices are heard, how value is defined, and what is considered “professional.”
A translation can lead to different interpretations of words, intent, and relevance. One participant noted, “it feels like we’re all speaking the same language—like we’re already in agreement.” But this felt more like a presumption than an objective truth. Even when women producers were centered in the room, assumptions around language, expertise, and perspective influenced who felt included and who didn’t.
In the English-language dialogue, a group of producers sat at a table together and chose to approach the question prompts differently to most of the group. Instead of zooming out and discussing structural inequities, they leaned into exchanges that felt immediate and practical: comparing cherry prices, discussing harvest timelines, and sharing insights from Costa Rica to Veracruz and Oaxaca in Mexico. Their participation was rooted by centering their lived knowledge and creating space for peer-to-peer dialogue. They redefined what contribution looked like in that room. It was an unspoken assertion that expertise exists not only in sweeping statements and metrics, but in the daily realities of those who grow coffee.
The ability to communicate in English, or in a professionalized development language, often determines whose stories are heard and whose strategies are taken seriously. The centering of producer dialogue doesn’t suggest that producers are the only voices that matter—equity requires many voices—but it recognizes that many producers’ participation often requires leaving behind farms and families, navigating unfamiliar settings, and speaking into rooms where their presence hasn’t always been accommodated. This circumstance underscores how participation itself becomes an act of courage and assertion. One participant put it: “Te están volviendo visible en un sector donde normalmente no lo eres.”[7]
While this invisibility often intersects with gender, it is not confined to it. Producers of all identities have felt the exclusion of being spoken about, rather than with. Bringing producers into view isn’t only a matter of representation, but is a deeper reordering of whose voice is central to the future of coffee.
Dominant definitions of expertise in the coffee sector are often shaped by institutional norms—fluency in so-called professional languages, familiarity with industry terms, or comfort in formal settings. Such expertise often implies that value lies in positionality and polished articulation, but such standards fail to recognize that not everyone, nor everything, comes from the same school of thought, economic background, and even language.[8] When producers choose to speak on their own terms and in their own rhythms, they are not stepping outside the dialogue, they are right in the midst.
Social Capital, Power, and Empowerment
During the day one dialogue, the room filled with stories of land, labor, and legacy. A simple question echoed: “How many of you women feel that you are being considered?” The answers exposed the central tension in discussions of power: the often-invisible struggle for recognition, agency, and voice. We perceive power as having the ability, the choice, the position to make decisions that best suit one’s own interests.
These discussions highlighted that power, particularly for producers, is not merely authoritative or top-down. Instead, it moves laterally—through shared labor, mutual trust, and the capacity to mobilize community toward collective goals. In this way, power takes form as a social capital—the power derived from relationships, networks of influence, and support. Social capital lives in a web of mutual care and knowledge exchange that producers maintain—often in spite of their limited access to formal power structures.[9] As one participant explained, “Having spaces for containment, networking, building, and mutual support is important—but also about how we feel, how we can seek alternatives, and how we can support each other.” The act of coming together itself became a source of power—but also a reframing of power itself.
Ideas flowed—from practical innovations to calls for transparency and recognition of household labor. In these spaces, knowledge became more than information; it became empowerment. Power wasn’t just having a voice, but the ability to recognize, claim, and value one’s own work.
If power in the form of social capital can be viewed in relation to another, then empowerment comes from within. Producers made clear that empowerment is not external. “Empowerment means understanding one’s own value. I believe that no one else will come to give you a place that you don’t give yourself, right?” This distinction between having power and being empowered is critical: empowerment arises not from being granted authority, but from cultivating self-worth—often recognized collectively.
The dialogues showed that empowerment, particularly gender equity, isn’t just about visibility; it’s about using dialogue to create opportunities for actual and tangible decision-making power. These dialogues, held in a dedicated space, allowed producers to redefine their own terms of engagement and speak freely about their experiences. As one producer noted: “There are many women here today, which is wonderful because we’re not with our husbands thinking, ‘Can I speak or not?’ We can express ourselves here.” In this understanding, empowerment is not about gaining access to the table within conventional spaces, but challenging the hierarchies and cultural and language norms in spaces of authority. The ability to speak arose not only from the concentration of producers and coffee professionals in the same room, but from a shared sentiment that being unseen and unheard has nothing to do with being without value.
Community: Hacer Comunidad
One of the clearest contrasts between the two sessions was how each group understood community—comunidad. For many producers, community isn’t a context; it is through community that identity, labor, and coffee are understood. As one producer reflected, “Es parte de la vida—community is the school, is the family, is the workplace, is the social unit. It is who we are.”
Coffee, for many producers, is an inheritance. Their personal and professional lives are entwined with family and place. In contrast, many participants from the second session—including roasters, traders, and other professionals from consuming countries—spoke of “community” as a professional space within more defined boundaries. Their relationship with coffee allowed for separation between work and personal life, a flexibility that producers often do not have. When dialogue spaces are grounded in a shared reality reflecting producers’ sense of communidad, they serve as expressive outlets for speaking from deeply personal and context-rich perspectives.
The phrase somos comunidad—we are a community—reflected this ethos. In the first dialogue, one producer noted that “shared value means everyone wins—men win, women win, the community wins.” Another continued: “There’s a lot of work ahead—raising awareness, changing household roles, but also informing men, generating culture, and fostering collaboration. We are all important.”
Discussions also focused on convivencia—the celebration and sharing of time together.[10] Participants emphasized the importance of mutual support: “Here we can talk about how we feel, how we can seek alternatives, and how we can support each other.” There was an emphasis on personal development leading to collective benefit: “First, there is the individual. We need to change from within, starting with the family. Beyond everything, there is the collective, and there are no differences there.” This sharing demonstrates the process of growth that happens in relationships, emphasizing that the “community takes care” rather than serving individual interests or existing as a mere professional grouping.
Hacer comunidad (to make community) means to lean into collective approaches: sharing knowledge, distributing value, and respecting the land. Unlike other forms of entrepreneurship that prioritize profit, smallholder coffee production cannot be measured by return on investment alone. Coffee follows, but community comes first. We chose to share the Spanish words convivencia and hacer comunidad because “community” in English doesn’t quite hold the same weight. These terms carried the emotional texture—care, collective aspiration, and belonging—that producers themselves expressed throughout the first day’s dialogue.
Invisible Work, Unequal Worth
If language reveals who is heard, and how concepts like “community” are defined, labor reveals who is valued. In coffee, that value is not solely defined at the cupping table or in contracts—it starts at home with the often-unseen labor of farming families, especially women. Yet this work remains under-acknowledged in farm economics, the supply chain, and decision-making spaces. Failing to account for this labor—often unpaid, often gendered—reinforces a system that sees farmers not as full economic actors, but as invisible laborers. “Without knowing the real cost, there’s no clarity,” one participant noted, and no foundation for equity.
Behind every calculation lies something deeper: the recognition of labor, knowledge, and dignity. But too often, producers’ knowledge is dismissed as informal or insufficient, simply because it doesn’t come wrapped in industry jargon or formal education. This quiet discrimination—epistemic injustice—denies producers the legitimacy to define value on their own terms.[11]
Reclaiming the Voices that Carry Value
Though the sessions were framed around gender, the most powerful reflections didn’t center gender directly. They surfaced in stories of labor, land, and recognition. They revealed that gender—like value—is layered, shaped by context, and resistant to simplification.
In returning to the room, we don’t land on answers so much as we reframe the questions. Value, like gender, cannot be imposed. What emerged was this: Producers are already defining value through their actions, relationships, and strategies. They don’t need to be “included”; they need to be heard on their own terms. Yet even more, what is of value, as expressed in word or action by producers, doesn’t need to have a place in the same room: it needs to be actively part of the creation of dialogue surrounding values that moves coffee forward.
Female coffee professionals from producing countries aren’t just supply chain participants—they are themselves thinkers, strategists, and leaders. From deciding when to pick the cherries, how to ferment, or how much to sell (and to whom) to organizing household budgets and farm/café investments, women are already making critical decisions in coffee every day. Their experiences hold knowledge that’s both practical and visionary—about how to grow food, resist injustice, and envision better futures for their families. Solutions to inequality must be built with those who live it. This requires more than inclusion; it means creating spaces where women producers define the agenda—not just join the room. As one participant said, “We have to give ourselves that value and show people that we are indeed here, working. Here we are.”
There is value—economic, social, and cultural—in listening to the producers whose voices have long been sidelined in the coffee sector. These aren’t just stories of hardship, but reservoirs of lived expertise. By listening, we begin to shift who is seen as a source of knowledge in coffee. Recognizing that knowledge, power, and language come in many forms—lived, embodied, relational—is central to building a coffee sector that isn’t just equitable in theory, but in practice.
To listen to producers is not just to hear stories; it is to shift who is seen as a source of knowledge and change. The future of coffee will be determined not only by yield or price, but by whose voices we choose to center—particularly those who have long maintained the land and its coffee. ◊
ALEXA ROMANO is a writer and researcher specializing in anthropology and Latin American studies, with a focus on coffee, gender, and value.
VERA ESPÍNDOLA RAFAEL collaborates with coffee producers across Latin America, using economic analysis and value chain expertise to embed their voices in sourcing decisions and expand access to strategic markets.
References
[1] The Iceberg Model, rooted in Systems Thinking, is a diagnostic tool that helps us to understand systemic structures and to identify and prevent recurring problems. The model aims to look beyond visible behaviors and understand the underlying structures, paradigms of thought, and sources of inspiration that drive them. For more information see Presencing Institute Toolkit, “Tool: The Iceberg Model,” https://pi-2022.s3.amazonaws. com/PI_u_school_Tools_2_0_Iceberg_Model_542086fb6b.pdf.
[2] While we use the term “coffee producer” throughout the article, what we mean can’t be distilled into a singular definition. The term represents all those integrated in the production of coffee who embody the cyclical and ever-changing demands, responsibilities, and roles required within paid and unpaid work.
[3] The World Café, “Key Concepts and References,” https://theworldcafe.com/key-concepts-resources/world-cafe-method/.
[4] Karma Chávez, “Embodied Translation: Dominant Discourse and Communication with Migrants Bodies-as-Text,” in Dialogues Across Diasporas, edited by Marion Rohrleitner and Sarah Ryan (Lexington Books, 2013).
[5] Pierre Bourdieu, “Habitus and Social Practice,” in Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge University Press, 1977).
[6] Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford University Press, 1977).
[7] “You are being made visible in a sector where you normally are not.”
[8] Olumide Popoola, “In Tongues—The Trouble Inside Language,” in Dialogues Across Diasporas.
[9] Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by John G. Richardson (Greenwood Press, 1986).
[10] Kerry Doyle and Gabriela Durán Barraza, “Luchando, Rimando, Sacando, Pintando: Young Female Artist Collectives in Ciudad Juárez,” in Dialogues Across Diasporas.
[11] Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford University Press, 2007).
We hope you are as excited as we are about the release of 25, Issue 24. This issue of 25 is made possible with the contributions of specialty coffee businesses who support the activities of the Specialty Coffee Association through its underwriting and sponsorship programs. Learn more about our underwriters here.
