Save this story Save Story Save this story Women make up nearly half of the agricultural workforce in developing countries, yet they account for fewer than one in five of the world’s agricultural landholders. As rising food prices, climate volatility, and food security concerns put farming back at the center of public debate, the United Nations designated 2026 as the International Year of the Woman Farmer, bringing renewed attention to a workforce that remains central to food systems while often excluded from land ownership, financing, and decision-making.
Between January and August 2026, I spent two weeks living with each of six women farmers. In the Galápagos, María Espinoza grows food without chemicals on islands that still import most of what they eat. In Guatemala, Aurelia Beb Tec cultivates cacao on land returned to her Q’eqchi’ community through a reparations process after decades of dispossession and war. In Chiapas, Yumara Salas Ramírez became the first woman to serve as secretary of her coffee cooperative. In Haiti, Lucianie Vil, a 70-year-old Madan Sara, carries her harvest by mule to the border market of Anse-à-Pitre. In Arkansas, Samantha Noble coordinates poultry production at a ranch devoted to regenerative farming. And in Honduras, Milexy Rodríguez lost 15 cows in 40 days when drought dried up her lagoon, rebuilding by drilling a well and diversifying.
The resulting photographs follow the rhythm of their days and the pressures shaping food production where they live. They also show what these women have built: cooperatives, savings groups, a coffee brand of their own, knowledge passed on to their daughters and neighbors.
María Espinoza, 54, lives in the highlands of San Cristóbal Island, in the Galápagos. She is up at 5 a.m. to feed her animals before heading into the fields, where she grows fruit and vegetables on a plot she slowly reclaimed from invasive blackberry. She lives alone but the farm sets the rhythm of her day, keeps her company, and puts food on the table.
Fresh water on the island is scarce and depends on El Junco lagoon, while pests and food shipped in from the mainland make farming hard. María uses no chemicals, makes her own organic fertilizers, and, since 2023, has trained in protecting soil and crops without pesticides.
María Espinoza gets dressed in her bedroom before heading out to work on her farm.
Espinoza pushes a wheelbarrow loaded with freshly harvested produce. Back home, she will wash and prepare it to take to market the next day.
Espinoza tends her stall at the agroecological market organized by Heifer, where she sells her produce alongside other farmers every Wednesday.
Yumara Salas Ramírez, 30, lives in Santa Rita, a community in the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, among coffee farms and dense forest at the edge of the El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve. A single mother to her daughter Ximena, she works at the Sierra Azul Cooperative’s collection center, where she checks coffee quality and is learning to cup. She was the first woman to serve as the cooperative’s secretary and is part of Café 89, the coffee brand of the cooperative’s women producers, created to make their work visible. Chiapas grows 41% of Mexico’s coffee, yet women hold only about a quarter of Mexico’s ejido land rights. Yumara speaks openly about the machismo that still holds women back, and about a region hit by drug-trafficking violence, climate change, and pests such as the coffee berry borer. Still, she chose to stay.
Yumara Salas Ramírez picks coffee during the harvest on the hillsides of Santa Rita, Chiapas.
Salas Ramírez rakes the coffee at the processing mill to ensure it dries evenly.
Salas Ramírez and Anayanci Domínguez Vazquez smell the cups during a cupping session at the Sierra Azul Cooperative.
Aurelia Beb Tec, 44, grows cacao on five manzanas (about eight and a half acres) in Pinares, a Maya Q’eqchi’ village in Alta Verapaz. Every Wednesday she walks the slopes with her daughters Brenda, Mayra, and Mirna, picking the ripe pods and selling the harvest to the local association. She planted every tree herself. At home she roasts the beans on a clay comal, grinds them on stone, and makes hot chocolate, while her daughters learn to make bars with cardamom and milk.
For decades the Q’eqchi’ of Pinares were dispossessed by landowners and forced into servitude; then came repression and civil war. After the peace accords, a reparations program brought land, seeds, and support, and cacao proved the best crop. In 2014 the community founded APIDIP (Asociación del Pueblo Indígena para el Desarrollo Integral Productivo de la Aldea Pinares), which today has 156 members and exports fair trade, organic cacao.
Aurelia Beb Tec walks among the cacao trees in the rain, searching for ripe pods during the harvest.
Beb Tec and her daughter Brenda sort cacao in their kitchen.
Lucianie Vil, 70, is a Madan Sara, one of the women traders who travel Haiti’s roads and markets to support their families and feed their communities. She lives in Ma Rouge, a scattered village in the mountains of southeastern Haiti. Every Wednesday she walks up to her plot in Thiotte, where she harvests pineapples, oranges, passion fruit, and coffee with her husband and grandchildren, then carries her harvest down the mountain by mule and sells it at the border market of Anse-à-Pitre on Fridays. More than half of Haiti’s population now faces food insecurity, and rural trade depends on routes increasingly cut off by violence and on harvests threatened by drought. Lucianie started selling at 13 and raised seven children on what the land gave her. Like the bird the Madan Sara are named after, she never stops moving.
On a narrow mountain trail, Lucianie Vil walks ahead of a mule loaded with fruit and vegetables on the three- hour journey from Romain to her home in Ma Rouge.
Vil clears a path with her machete through the undergrowth on her plot in Romain.
Vil counts the day’s earnings with a fellow vendor at the market in Anse-à-Pitre. She reports that a day at the market brings in around $150 in sales, of which she keeps roughly $100 once transport and other costs are paid.
Before dawn at Heifer Ranch, Samantha Noble already has her boots on. She checks the mobile chicken coops, looks over the birds, and plans with her team which paddock to move that day. Born in Minnesota in 1993, she grew up around animals and ended up studying animal science.
A professor told her about Heifer International and she came to the ranch as a volunteer, first guiding school visits, then rotating among livestock species. Poultry has been her trade ever since, and today she is the ranch’s poultry production coordinator. Heifer Ranch, about 40 miles west of Little Rock, is a living laboratory for regenerative livestock farming, where planned grazing, holistic management, and animal health are researched and demonstrated. Her goal is to help other producers save time, improve their farms, and find a better balance between work and life.
Morning fog over the ranch roads in Perryville, Arkansas.
Noble, the ranch’s poultry production coordinator, walks through one of the mobile coops built on the pasture.
Noble takes two of her children to a swimming lesson.
Milexy Rodríguez, 46, lives in El Nance, a rural community in Olanchito, in the department of Yoro. Over the years, she built up a cattle farm that supported her family. But in 2023 the lagoon her herd depended on dried up, and in just 40 days she lost 15 cows. To stop relying on rain alone, she drilled a well and began to diversify, and today she raises cattle, grows chili peppers, and keeps a small apiary with her daughter. Honduras is facing a new water emergency, and producers in Yoro report a sharp drop in the milk reaching collection centers. Rural women also face barriers to credit and resources. Milexy belongs to a community savings group and shares what she has learned as a community leader and trainer.
Milexy Rodríguez, in a blue shirt and hat, and her daughter Nayeli, in white, at a cattle fair held one evening around the CREL, the community milk collection center, in a neighboring village. Organized by local ranching families, these gatherings bring neighbors together and offer a break from the daily rhythm of work on the ranch.
Rodríguez milks one of her cows on the ranch. Today she gets fewer than 10 liters a day, far below what she produced before losing her herd in the 2023 drought.
A calf feeds from its mother on Rodríguez’s ranch.
Milexy Rodríguez rides home on her motorcycle after delivering her milk to the El Edén collection center.
The project was produced with support from Heifer International.
Who Shows Up—and Who Vanishes—When Your Kid Is in Trouble?
25 of the Coziest, Most Autumnal Movies to Watch This Fall
9 Adorable Photos of a (Very) Young Michael B. Jordan
Listen to The Run-Through with Vogue , a weekly podcast featuring the most exciting stories and hot takes from the worlds of culture, politics, sports and–of course–fashion
The Vogue Runway app has expanded! Update to the latest version to see all Vogue content, as well as new features like our Runway Genius quiz, Group Chats, and posts from Vogue contributors.
Become a Vogue Business Member —the ultimate resource for fashion and beauty industry professionals.
Never miss a story: Add Vogue.com to your preferred sources in Google.
Source: Lifestyle
