Updated May 13, 2021
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Sipping coffee can be leisurely and delightful, but growing coffee is an entirely different story. After a laborious season of growing, coffee cherries are handpicked by farmers in notoriously precarious conditions. Coffee plants thrive on hilly mountainsides where sunlight is abundant, so pickers are not only exposed to the harsh sun but may also have to contend with venomous snakes and biting insects, which often take refuge under the tree shade.
Despite these challenges, coffee pickers oftentimes arenât compensated fairly, earning as little as 15 cents for every kilogram of coffee beans they collect in places like Colombia, according to this BBC report.