mAríA ESTHEr SAuT NIñO

For María Esther Saut Niño, community is a verb. When a fungus began decimating her neighbors’ coffee crops in Chiapas, Mexico, Saut and her husband took action, converting part of their cattle ranch into a plant nursery to cultivate healthy coffee-plant seedlings for local farmers. As the outbreak deepened, they turned their entire ranch into a shaded coffee farm, eventually distributing 20 million healthy plants to the community. Since then, her Rainforest Alliance Certified farm has become a model for area farmers, who visit to learn about planting shade trees, enriching soils, and other sustainable and climate-smart methods.

Now that she’s become an expert herself, Saut delights in sharing her knowledge with her community and supporting other women in the process. Because the local population is largely Indigenous, she hired a woman who speaks the local language, Tzeltal, to assist with these efforts. And when she realized that these families had little access to healthcare, she forged an agreement with local doctors to serve the community. She also involves local women in coffee processing and the cultivation of model plots of specialty beans so that they can target their coffee sales to higher-paying markets.

While Saut is not originally from Chiapas, it is where her heart is. “It is important to show your neighbors that you are out there working in the fields, and that you want to understand and help them, even if you didn’t grow up here.”