Last week I shared why we ask you to look for the Fairtrade Mark, and introduced you to Blanca, a cacao farmer I met at the COOPALGSA cooperative in Peru.

Blanca raises guinea pigs and hens alongside her cacao and has received technical training through her cooperative. What stayed with me most, though, was the way she talked about price. The work involved in growing cacao doesn’t suddenly change because the global cocoa price has gone up or down. The trees still need tending, the cacao still needs harvesting and fermenting, and the costs of running a farm remain. But what a farmer receives for that work can change dramatically.

Her story has come back to me this year because 2026 has been declared the United Nations’ International Year of the Woman Farmer.

Why a Year of the Woman Farmer?

The year is about recognising something that has often been overlooked: women are an essential part of agriculture and the world’s food systems.

According to the FAO’s latest data, women make up around 42% of the global agrifood workforce. They grow, harvest, process and trade food around the world, yet continue to face greater barriers when it comes to access to land, finance, training, technology and decision-making. Women in agricultural wage employment also earn around 82 cents for every dollar earned by men. You can read more about women in agrifood systems through the FAO.

So this year isn’t simply about celebrating women who work in agriculture. It’s about looking more closely at whether the women doing the work also have access to the resources, income and influence that come with it.

And cocoa is no exception.

Women are an essential part of the cocoa supply chain, involved in everything from tending cacao trees and harvesting pods to fermenting, drying and preparing beans for sale.

But contributing to the work of a farm and having an equal say in the business of that farm are not necessarily the same thing.

The women I remember from Peru

Blanca wasn’t the only woman who stayed with me from that trip.

I also met Belinda.

Belinda was one of the most productive farmers in her cooperative, and one of those people whose energy you notice immediately.

She was farming land that had belonged to her mother and had been working it for 11 years. At the time, five hectares of her farm were certified organic, and another six were conventional, but she was steadily transitioning the whole farm to organic production, two hectares at a time.

Her conventional cacao was producing around 3,000kg per hectare, while her organic crops were achieving roughly 2,500–3,000kg. She was well known within the cooperative for the productivity of her farm.

What struck me about both Blanca and Belinda was how active they were in shaping their own farms.

They were learning new techniques, making decisions, adapting to changing prices, and finding ways to make farming work in circumstances they couldn’t always control.

That is an important part of the conversation around women farmers.

Women don’t need to be portrayed simply as people waiting to be helped. They are already farmers, business owners, decision-makers and experts in their own land.

The question is whether the systems around them give them the same opportunity to succeed.

Where Fairtrade fits

Fairtrade works to increase women’s participation, leadership and economic opportunities within producer organisations. Its work on gender equality includes programmes designed to help women build business, financial, negotiation and leadership skills.

One example is Fairtrade’s Women’s School of Leadership, which supports women to take a greater role in their producer organisations and communities, including stepping into committee and leadership positions.

But sometimes the difference is much more practical.

Blanca told me about technical training provided through her cooperative, including learning how to turn animal manure and green waste into effective compost.

It might not sound especially glamorous. I can confirm the compost pile wasn’t.

But standing there with Blanca, it felt much more meaningful than a broad statement about sustainability. It was useful knowledge she could take back to her own farm, supported through a cooperative system designed to give farmers a greater say in what they need.

That ability to participate matters.

More than recognition

The International Year of the Woman Farmer is not about suddenly giving women a place in agriculture.

They are already there.

When I think about the women behind our cacao, I still picture Blanca with her animals and that enormous compost pile, and Belinda, full of energy, proudly showing us a farm she had spent more than a decade making her own. Women like Blanca and Belinda are already growing cacao, running farms, learning, experimenting, and making decisions every day.

What this year asks us to look at is whether they have equal access to the land, resources, training, income, and leadership opportunities that allow them to keep doing it, and to do it on their own terms. That is also at the heart of the International Year of the Woman Farmer, which is focused on closing gender gaps and strengthening women’s livelihoods and leadership across agrifood value chains.

As a female-founded business, that naturally resonates with us. But more importantly, a fairer food system can’t really be fair if some of the people doing the work have less opportunity to benefit from it.

 

 

Lucy