Coffee pickers go hungry as prices plunge

By Greg Brosnan

COMITANCILLO, Guatemala (AlertNet) - A grandson with a swollen belly clutched at Maria Agustin's tattered skirt as she surveyed a dwindling corn supply and wondered when her son and daughter would return to their dirt-poor mountain hut with badly needed cash.

The future of this Mayan family, and of many others in the highlands of north-western Guatemala, looks bleak as its younger members drift back empty-handed from the annual coffee-picking exodus to the steamy south coast where they found plantations either closed or offering miserable wages because of low prices.

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