Moving on up!

You have probably heard that everything in the coffee world is going upwards in cost. The New York Commodity market is at a 10 year high! yay! Or is it?

Unlike the Brexit hikes of 2016 where the new kids on the block ( can you sense an exasperated tone?) decided it was an opportunity to put prices up ( by 10% Which is huge BTW) because of the dollar movement and a good quality of political opportunism. These coffee prices didn’t go downwards when everything returned to the previous levels. Surprise! and more and more coffee shops became roasteries. In fact, I think there are more roasteries than coffee pun-names now.

Interesting bit AKA The Point!

I think that there is a new shift of thinking that it must be good to be a coffee farmer right now, but there are different pressures now that weren’t there in previous years. Labour has dramatically increased, fertilisers have (in some cases) more than doubled in cost and crop yields (In Brazil and Tanzania) are much lower, with a less than cheerful outlook for the next harvest for many.

Income for coffee farmers has not increased and climate change (the route of many of the problems) can only be ignored by lemmings and fools.

There is a fear that those who have been sailing on the fair seas of profit may abandon morals and reasoning and lower the bar to fit the budget. This is not the time to walk away, actually, it’s time to (wo)man up and be counted. Be transparent and real. Coffee has been too cheap for too long.

What is your view?