The rising C-price is dominating conversation in the coffee world. But a higher market price hasn’t translated into better livelihoods for most producers. The structure of the industry still directs power and profit toward consuming countries. Unless that changes, small shifts in price will not shift the system. The problem is not simply how much coffee costs - it’s who sets the terms.
We spoke to Micah Sherer from Skylark Coffee about why the current moment should force the industry to confront power, risk, and responsibility.
A dependency cycle rooted in colonial extraction
Coffee as a global commodity was built through colonialism. European powers established plantations across the Americas, using enslaved Africans to produce coffee that was shipped back to Europe to create wealth elsewhere. Land was taken, labour was coerced, and value was extracted. And this system has been perpetuated into today’s industry.
Most of the value in coffee is still captured in consuming countries because roasting, branding, retail and cultural significance all happen there. The way the coffee trade works today did not emerge by accident - it follows the same patterns of extraction and imbalance established during the colonial period. Producers remain positioned as price takers. They respond to a market they do not shape, where volatility is treated as normal and stability is treated as infeasible. Profit accumulates at the consuming end while risk remains concentrated where coffee is grown. Wealth continues to move outward and instability remains at origin.
Dependency theory explains this clearly: resource flows from producing countries into consuming ones, consolidating their power. The pattern is not accidental or temporary. Rather, it is structural and self-reinforcing. Coffee-producing countries thereby remain economically dependent on exporting a commodity whose value they do not control.
Why a high market doesn’t guarantee better livelihoods
The assumption that a rising C-price means more money is going to producers is overly simplistic. A higher price often reflects a smaller harvest, so a producer may receive more per kilo but have significantly less coffee to sell. In many producing regions, local currency devaluation means that a higher dollar price does not translate into increased purchasing power. What appears to be an improvement in the abstract, collapses once it meets the realities of local economies.
Market access also determines who benefits. Producers without strong export relationships, cupping labs, dry mills, logistics access or language familiarity may have no way to sell coffee at what the global market reports as its current value. The market may rise, but they have no ability to access it.
Volatility intensifies this. Some farmers hold coffee back, waiting for prices to climb further, only to watch the coffee age and lose value, or find that buyers have stopped purchasing entirely. So while the market may look strong from the outside, the gains are uneven and often fail to reach the producers themselves.
We have stabilised the market before - and chose not to maintain it
The first International Coffee Agreement created the most stable and equitable period the coffee market has ever experienced, when adjusted for inflation. Prices were held within a predictable band. Producers could plan. Volatility was controlled. The agreement was undone not because it failed, but because the largest consuming and producing hegemons found it economically inconvenient to maintain.
When Brazil and the United States wanted more flexibility in futures trading and surplus management, the ICA was dismantled. The shift to futures-dominated pricing was a political choice, not an inevitability. The instability that followed was not accidental; it was a decision on behalf of those who set the terms of the industry.
What restructuring the industry could look like now
Large-scale governmental reform matters and should be pursued. A new international agreement would stabilise prices and redistribute risk. But waiting for government alignment is slow and uncertain, and change can happen at other levels in parallel.
Roasters can shift how they buy coffee and hedge risk. This means treating price not as a contract delivered once a year, but as a conversation based on the real cost of production and the needs of producers. Roasters have the right to reject coffees at various opportunities along the value chain, which leaves producers in a precarious position. Roasters can afford to take risks, in a way that producers cannot, yet currently it is only producers taking these risks. If consuming markets want to claim ethical concern, they must be willing to hold some of this risk themselves.
Importers and exporters can change their role too. Instead of gatekeeping and filtering who is visible, they can serve as facilitators - bringing forth producers who do not have established market access, who work in lesser-recognised regions, or who do not speak the languages of trade. This is slower, harder and requires more ongoing work. But it shifts power in real terms.
Meanwhile, producers face their own strategic challenges. When commercial prices rise, diverting cherries into commodity channels can seem rational. But abandoning specialty entirely risks losing access to differentiated markets when prices fall again. Maintaining specialty involves more than agronomy; it requires narrative agency. Producers should feel able to present their identities, practices and processing styles on their own terms. Marketing language has always been part of coffee; the question is who gets to use it.
The strongest trading relationships in coffee are not transactional; they are relational, context-based and built on shared values. Those relationships take more time, require more care, and involve shared vulnerability. But they produce longevity rather than extraction.
What needs to change
A fair coffee industry depends on shifting the distribution of risk, agency and decision-making. If consuming countries continue to benefit from the structure of the trade while producers continue to absorb instability, the system remains extractive regardless of price.
Change must happen at multiple levels at once: political, commercial, cultural and relational. If the industry is serious about fairness, it cannot maintain the existing structure and hope that paying slightly more will be enough. The work is larger, slower and more transformative - and it has to begin now.
References:
‘Addressing Colonial Inequalities In The Coffee Sector’ - Perfect Daily Grind - https://perfectdailygrind.com/2020/10/addressing-colonial-inequalities-in-the-coffee-sector/
‘Coffee. Milk. Blood. Undoing colonial and neo-colonial ruin in coffee.’ - North Star Roastery - https://www.northstarroast.com/en-gb/blogs/sustainability/coffee-milk-blood-undoing-colonial-and-neo-colonial-ruin-in-coffee
‘How Coffee Impacted Trade and Colonization in the New World’ - Tamana Coffee - https://tamanacoffee.com/blogs/news/how-coffee-impacted-trade-and-colonization-in-the-new-world
‘Unpacking the Colonial History of Latin American Coffee Production’ - Barista Magazine - https://www.baristamagazine.com/unpacking-the-colonial-history-of-latin-american-coffee-production-part-one/
‘Coffee... An Industry Built on Colonialism and Slavery’ - Mayorga Coffee - https://mayorgacoffee.com/blogs/news/coffee-colonialism-and-slavery
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