More than 90% of coffee exports come from developing countries such as Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, and Mexico. Evidence suggests the presence of child labor and labor exploitation in coffee production in all of the above countries, in addition to many others like Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Dominican Republic, and Uganda.
Two main groups: child labor and adult labor
About 20% of children in coffee-growing countries fall victim to labor exploitation in coffee cultivation. Estimated 34,131 children laborers growing coffee in Vietnam, 12,526 of which are under the age of 15. The same report finds almost 5,000 children under 14 working on coffee plantations in Brazil, often without a contract or protective equipment.
<aside> 🇨🇮 In Ivory Coast, children are subject to human trafficking and forced labor. Children are forcibly transported to coffee plantations from nearby countries including Benin, Mali, Togo and Burkina Faso, and recruited to work for little or no pay, often for three or four years until they could return home**. →** Threats of violence ****and withheld payments ****prevent them from leaving the farms, and many suffer from denial of food and sick leave.
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The children working 40-hour weeks in grueling conditions, picking coffee for a daily wage little more than the price of a latte. The beans are also supplied to Nespresso, owned by Nestlé. Some of the children, who worked around 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, looked as young as 8.
Parents often pull their children out of school to work with them. This pattern of behavior jeopardizes children’s health and education in underdeveloped rural areas, where they already experience significant barriers and setbacks.
<aside> ❗ Families put their kids to work because they desperately need the income.
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Plantation workers often toil under intense heat for up to 10 hours a day, and many face debt bondage and serious health risks due to exposure to dangerous agrochemicals**.** Many work without a contract, timely payment, protective gear, or appropriate medical care. Migrants are especially vulnerable since many cannot afford to return home and have to rely on plantation work to survive.
<aside> 🫣 Workers in Guatemala suffer physical violence ****as well as threats of loss of work, wages, or food if they fail to perform at a certain – often unreasonable – standard.
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At the end of the day, coffee farmers work under extreme heat for 10 hours and can only make as low as 1% to 3%. Only a small fraction – often 7% to 10%, but sometimes as low as 1% to 3% – of the retail price reaches the hands of coffee farmers.
<aside> 🇬🇹 In Guatemala, coffee pickers often receive a daily quota of 45 kilograms just to earn the minimum wage: $3 a day.
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The lack of visibility in this laborious process causes the coffee supply chain to be vulnerable to unethical labor practices**.**
Since most coffee farms are located in low-middle-income countries or rural areas, it is difficult for the government really monitor the working conditions of the entire coffee supply chain from coffee farm to customers and prevent the exploitation of employees.
Developed countries externalize a significant portion of their “ecological footprint” to developing ones. Put more simply, industrialized countries ****use the ecological carrying capacity of periphery countries to offset the environmental impact of their own consumption.
This map shows the world’s top 25 consuming countries (shown in shades of brown) alongside the top 25 producing countries (shown in shades of green). The 49 nations highlighted on this map, is the largest coffee producers and consumers in the world.