Dispatches on Channel 4 last night (2/3/20) raised the thorny issue of child labour in coffee being purchased by such behemoths as Starbucks and Nestle from Guatemala. Simply put, the pickers are being paid so little money that families have no choice but to get their kids working from a young age so that they can put food on the table.
In an age when we get to see and taste so many great coffees it’s rare to come across a coffee that stops you dead in your tracks. As an origin Mexico produces significant quantities of coffee but I have to say that nothing up until now had been that memorable.
Following my recent visit to the coffee producers of Myanmar I was very struck by the amount of effort being put into different processing methods. It’s something that is familiar to the speciality coffee industry however is quite new for your average consumer.