- Child labour is a prevalent problem in the coffee industry. In Kenya's central province workforce, 60% are children.
- Children may start working as soon as they are tall enough to reach the lower branches (average height: 3 - 3.5m therefore lower branches may well be 1m or below).
- Their tasks include: picking, spraying, sorting, fertilising, pruning, transporting, weeding
- In the coffee plantations of Honduras, children make up between 20%-40% of the workforce.
- More than 70% of the world’s cocoa supply comes from West Africa – where children are often forced to harvest cocoa in dangerous conditions.
- Family farmers usually bring in a cash income of $500-$1,000 a year for their coffee.
- This makes Fair Trade potentially representative of an estimated 75% of all coffee farmer
- In Guatemala for example, coffee pickers have to pick a 100-pound quota in order to get the minimum wage of less than $3/day. A recent study of plantations in Guatemala showed that over half of all coffee pickers don't receive the minimum wage, in violation of Guatemalan labor laws.
Websites
- http://millicentbadesign.blogspot.co.nz/2011/11/child-labour-in-coffee-world.html
- http://campaign.worldvision.com.au/issues/buy-ethical-end-exploitation/
- http://campaign.worldvision.com.au/wp- content/uploads/2014/03/7280_DTL_Factsheet_Coffee_Web_Single.pdf
- http://www.organicconsumers.org/starbucks/coffeelabor.htm
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