Labor Practices

Coffee is one of the world's most labor-intensive crops. Cherries are hand-picked by millions of workers, often on seasonal contracts, in countries with weak labor protections.

Minimum acceptable practice: living wage, safe conditions, no child labor, no forced labor, freedom of association. Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, and direct trade programs attempt to verify this, but audits are imperfect.

The most reliable signal is direct, long-term relationships between roasters and farms — when a roaster visits annually and knows their producers by name, labor problems get caught early.