Coffee: Slavery, Destruction and Shortage
What Coffee Drinkers Must Know
Coffee is one of our everyday products that appear in the 2018 List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor worldwide.
The list also shows that labor and human rights abuses are currently taking place in 17 coffee-growing countries, mostly against vulnerable coffee farm workers and their families.
An in-depth investigation of the world’s largest coffee-growing nation, Brazil, discovered children and adults working under “conditions analogous to slavery” in some coffee farms. The investigative report revealed that these workers often are exposed to health and safety risks, including for using toxic pesticides, lacking protective equipment, and for living in poor conditions at coffee farms. And yet, their work is seriously underpaid, as usually “less than 2% of the retail price” goes to the coffee farmers, according to the DanWatch report, what makes them unable to afford a decent living.
These work conditions are terribly unfair and sometimes illegal — but it’s happening in the plain sight of major coffee retailers.
