Ecuador: Alicia Roque Farms

A partnership forged in 2020, The Chain Collaborative is working with Alicia Roque Farms as an ongoing Community-Led Development Partner. Located in Manabí, Ecuador, Alicia Roque Farms is an individual coffee farm promoting sustainable agriculture practices for coffee production in a region where coffee growing has recently declined. To rebuild the coffee economy, farm owners Marlon Mera Falcones and Kat Castillo seek to organize other local producers to share knowledge about organic methods, sustainable production, and higher quality coffee. As part of their mission to build a cohesive community of growers and reach international markets, Alicia Roque Farms also advocates for community-led decision-making and invests their resources in social projects to protect the basic needs of farmers. We look forward to accompanying Alicia Roque Farms as they grow their grassroots initiative of smallholder organization, sustainable coffee production, and local livelihood development. 

Since 2020, with accompaniment from TCC, Alicia Roque Farms has:

• Begun the construction of a local processing center to improve coffee quality, doubling incomes from coffee in one year
• Invested in a project to ensure access to water in a partner community, for both drinking and irrigation
• Strengthened their collective of local coffee growers to facilitate the sharing of knowledge related to sustainable farming, community organizing, and coffee quality
• Started the design of new community projects