Category: Farmworkers

Too little, too late on slave labor in coffee?

2016-03-04 Comments Off on Too little, too late on slave labor in coffee?

Yesterday we published this reflection on Section 910 of the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015—a measure that ends coffee’s 85-year-old exemption from the U.S. ban on the importation of goods produced by slave labor. By now, most readers will have seen this blistering report from the Danish human rights organization Danwatch on […]

Washington closes forced labor loophole

2016-03-03 Comments Off on Washington closes forced labor loophole

The biggest news in coffee last week did not come out of Portland or Seattle or LA, but out of Washington: President Obama signed the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 into law.  Here’s what it has to do with coffee. . .

CRS Coffeelands Blog Year in Review

2016-01-19 Comments Off on CRS Coffeelands Blog Year in Review

Today, the annual review of the Coffeelands content you liked best over the past year. .

Coffee’s MVPs (“Most Vulnerable Players”)

2016-01-05 Comments Off on Coffee’s MVPs (“Most Vulnerable Players”)

We ended 2015 with nine posts on the issue of modern slavery in the coffeelands—this eight-part series on our research into wretched labor conditions on a small number of Brazilian coffee estates and this reflection on how that work is inspired by our mission to serve the poorest and most vulnerable people.  Those posts were […]

Naïveté

2015-12-24 Comments Off on Naïveté

Before we break Christmas, a reflection on two words we don’t care for when applied to our coffee programming—“well-intentioned” and “naive”—and a perspective from Pope Francis that turns the idea of naïveté on its head.

Final Thoughts (For Now) on Modern Slavery in the Coffeelands

2015-12-21 Comments Off on Final Thoughts (For Now) on Modern Slavery in the Coffeelands

For more than a week we have been writing here about Brazil’s extraordinary effort to eradicate modern slavery, and how that effort relates to the country’s coffee sector. Today is the eighth, final, and perhaps most important post in the series. The one that answers the question, “So, what?” So, now we know this terrible […]

The National Pact to Eradicate Slave Labor

2015-12-18 Comments Off on The National Pact to Eradicate Slave Labor

On Tuesday, we explained here that Brazil gets high marks for enlisting businesses in the country’s campaign to eradicate modern slavery.  Yesterday we profiled in some detail one of the two instruments that leaders in the country’s private sector use in their efforts to eradicate modern slavery from their supply chains: the Dirty List.  Today, […]

Brazil’s “Transparency List”

2015-12-17 Comments Off on Brazil’s “Transparency List”

Earlier this year we visited with Rosa Maria Campos in Brasilia. She leads the union of labor inspectors who visit factories and farms all over Brazil as part of the country’s fight against slavery—inspectors who face budget shortfalls in the capital and hostility from the employers they inspect in the field. Rosa Maria is inspiring—courageous, […]

Brazil’s Fight Against Modern Slavery

2015-12-16 Comments Off on Brazil’s Fight Against Modern Slavery

Brazil’s fight against modern slavery has been held up as an example by labor rights advocates from Free the Slaves to the U.S. Department of Labor to the UN’s International Labor Organization. Its effort has been ambitious (the goal is total eradication of modern slavery), courageous (websites have been hacked, activists threatened, inspectors killed), creative […]