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© 2011 Erika J. Schultz/ The Seattle Times

Seasonal coffee workers unload baskets of coffee cherries into a transport truck at the end of the day at Santa Eduviges farm in Costa Rica. Workers use plastic buckets, called cajuelas, to collect the coffee cherries. While picking, they tie the buckets to their waist, a practice that has not changed in more than 100 years. Workers, including Ignacio Rodriguez Castro (in red hat), spread out coffee cherries just hauled in by the field workers, in the bed of a transport truck at the Santa Edvigues Coffee Farm. This year, Santa Eduviges will sell 70 percent of the more than 7 million pounds of beans harvested on his farms to the company. Pancho Guerra carries a sack of freshly picked coffee, weighing almost 100 pounds, up a steep hillside at Roberto Naranjo and Victoria Zuniga Naranjo’s coffee farm outside San Marcos de Tarrazu, Costa Rica. By late afternoon, tractors and trucks file down the farms’ dirt roads to be loaded with the day’s harvest. Most seasonal workers that pick coffee in Costa Rica are Nicaraguan or indigenous Panamanians. Many workers travel and work as families, or are single men that migrate in groups. Even though Santa Eduviges provides free day care, children sometimes work side-by-side with their families. Above, a young boy watches a man fill a cajuela with coffee before it is unloaded unto the transport truck behind them. (Second from left) Isaella Abrego-Abrego and Ermelinda Abrego, seasonal workers from Panama, carry baskets of ripe coffee up a steep hillside at Ricardo Calderon Madrigal’s coffee farm near the town of Santa Maria de Dota, Tarrazu, Costa Rica. A young boy, leaning on a coffee transport truck, watches seasonal coffee workers finishing the day at the Santa Elena Estate in Costa Rica. A worker carries a bag through a Santa Eduviges coffee field in Costa Rica. Who: Costa Rica Starbucks coffee story Vargas farm Marcella Pineda, 21, picks coffee with her husband, not pictured, at Roberto Naranjo’s and coffee farm outside San Marcos de Tarrazu, Costa Rica. The Pineda’s and other seasonal workers at the farm are indigenous Panamanians from the Ngobe Bugle tribe, of Panama’s Bocas del Toro province. They travel and work as a families, and return each year to the farm for work. These and other indigenous groups have been historically discriminated in Costa Rica and other Central American countries. Workers walk through the fields in Santa Eduviges, Costa Rica. A variety of banana trees are planted among the coffee plants to help soil quality. These trees help meet Starbucks’ standards for soil conservation and shade-tree requirements. Coffee plants, trees from the banana family, and shade trees cover a steep hillside at the Montes de Oro coffee farm outside of San Marcos de Tarrazu, Costa Rica. Maixcol Ibarra, 20, cuts hair outside a row of worker housing at Santa Eduviges. Permanent workers pay for electricity, and no rent. Seasonal workers do not pay rent or utilities. “We really need those people,” said Norman Alpizar, a supervisor at the Santa Eduviges mill. Many Nicaraguans migrate to Costa Rica to pick coffee due to harsh economic conditions in their home country.