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| The validity of this article as a news story is, as written, disputed. Wikinews does not publish reports on events that are not sufficiently recent. For synthesis, new details must have come to light within the past five to seven days, and the news event itself must have happened within ten days. Unless sources can be found and a news event chosen to bring this article into compliance with those requirements, the article may be deleted. If any new details from the last five to seven days are newsworthy in their own right then an article could be written with these updates as the actual news event. Exceptions are possible where original reporting adds significant new and newsworthy information to the article.
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Tuesday, December 10, 2024
On Friday, CNBC reported that the price of coffee had reached a 50-year high.[Source][Unsourced]
CNBC reported that it was due to climate change.[Source]
CNBC reported on Tuesday that the price of coffee had risen by 70% in 2024 to USD$3.50 per pound.[Source]
On Tuesday, the BBC reported that the price of arabica coffee beans had risen to USD$3.44 per pound, due to market concerns regarding future supply chain problems in Brazil, one of the world’s largest coffee exporters, with 39% of the entire world’s supply.[Unsourced][Source][1]
Image: MarkSweep.
Image: USAID-image (Cafe Bom Dia).
Will Corby, director of coffee and social impact at supplier Pact Coffee said that although there were “near-perfect” growing conditions in Brazil in 2024 and a surplus is expected, dry periods in the late summer months raised concerns about supply in future seasons. He argued that the price of exporting coffee from its country of origin to western retailers has been too low “for far too long”, and that the price increases will make production more viable for farmers.[2] David Ortega, a professor of “food economics” at Michigan State University, echoed this sentiment.[Source]
He also attributed floods, frost and high temperatures to the shortage.
Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank, said Brazil saw its worst drought in 70 years in the late summer of 2024, which was followed by heavy rainfall in October during harvest, spurring fears of crop failure.
In addition to arabica coffee beans, which are the most popular variant of coffee beans in the world, the price of the less expensive Robusta coffee beans (which are used to make instant coffee) also hit record a record high in November due to similar weather conditions in Vietnam, which also suffered from long bouts of dryness and rainy harvest conditions in 2024.[3]
The anticipation of lower returns on crops in the two countries was believed to be instrumental in the price surges.
Coffee-based drink producers such as Nestlé have announced plans to raise prices and reduce portion sizes on their products to combat dwindling returns due to price increases on raw materials.[4]
The price increases are record-setting. Adjusted for inflation, the current price of coffee would be equivelevnt to USD$0.66 when he previous record was set in 1977, when an unusual frost laid waste to coffee plantations in the country, killing over one billion coffee bean trees.[Source]
In addition to supply decreases in coffee, increased demand for the drink was said to have contributed to the increase as well.[5] Second only to crude oil, coffee remained one of the most traded commodities in the world by volume in 2024. In China, consumption has doubled within the past ten years.
Richard Wood. “Coffee lovers warned of expected price rise” — 9News, December 10, 2024
