Coffee Rots as Farm Workers Quit to Build Colombian Highways
- Record-low unemployment creates a shortage of pickers
- Labor squeeze causing higher levels of insect infestation
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Colombian coffee growers face soaring labor costs and harvesting delays as pickers leave for better-paid construction jobs.
Producers of the famed arabica beans brewed by companies including Starbucks Corp. are paying workers twice what they received two years ago. Still, the labor shortages are leaving coffee beans on trees longer, allowing them to fall to the ground, where beetles can bore into the cherries.