When we learned more than two years ago that Brazil’s government had cited 15 coffee farms for profiting from modern slavery, we asked our partner Repórter Brasil to help us understand whether those farms contained the full universe of cases of modern slavery in the country’s coffee sector, or whether they were representative of a […]
The current issue of Vanity Fair features this inspiring profile of one our partners in the fight against modern slavery in Brazil. The author ably summarizes modern slavery like this: “[It] differs from classic chattel slavery, in which people are held as private property, but to the extent that it treats people as tools to […]
The Atlantic slave trade left a ruinous legacy everywhere, but in the Americas, perhaps no country was more affected than Brazil. During a ghastly period of more than 300 years, estimates suggest that somewhere between four and five million slaves were delivered to its shores by slave traders—more than one-third of all Africans dragged to […]
During the summer of 2013, we learned quite by accident that 15 coffee estates in Brazil were included in the government’s “Dirty List,” an official registry of farms and firms found to be profiting from what the country’s laws define as modern-day slavery. We turned for insight to a long-time CRS partner in São Paulo […]
Last summer, researchers at the Danish human rights organization Danwatch published this story about labor rights violations in the coffee sector in Brazil. The authors argue that the problem “has its roots in the fact that some people believe that it is ok to exploit others to increase their own gain.” We won’t argue that […]
The Direct Trade-v-Fair Trade debate resurfaced here last week. I weighed in on that debate here yesterday. Today I want to explore a related idea: that the leading proponents of these two trading models may have communicated themselves into corners from which they can’t easily extricate themselves even though they desperately need to. Direct Trade […]
I recently read the NPR story about apple pickers in Pennsylvania. The piece made me reflect on the larger idea of “the harvest” and contrasted it to the physical acts of harvesting. The harvest represents the culmination of a season’s worth of work and investment (but also a bit of fortune having nature cooperate and […]
I have been writing for this blog on issues related to farm labor consistently since the beginning of last year, and talking with colleagues in the industry about farmworkers in the coffee sector for even longer. During that time, two common responses have been denial (it’s not really a big deal) and resignation (it is […]
Over the past two days, I published this summary of a peer-reviewed study based on data from our Borderlands project in Colombia and this interview with the study’s lead author. Today, I extract its key insights on farm labor, which include a characterization of farmworkers in the coffeelands as poorer and less educated than certified […]
The tools coffee companies use most commonly to identify and address challenges related to farm labor in their supply chains are certifications and third-party verifications. There has been generally very little engagement by market actors beyond those approaches. That’s what makes La Revancha, a coffee estate in Nicaragua, so extraordinary. Ownership, management and labor at […]
