Coffee Farmer Consultations: Highlight on Honduras

VOCAL’s Ashlee Tuttleman traveled with Francisco Avilez of Rikolto, a VOCAL Network Member, to the coffee-growing regions of Marcala and Copán to hear directly from farmers and cooperative leaders about their experiences with today’s market conditions: historically high C-market prices, tightening regulations such as EUDR, and the added pressure of U.S. tariffs.

What we heard on the ground differs sharply from many assumptions circulating in industry discussions.

Common assumption: Farmers are making strong profits, liquidity is high, and this is the ideal moment for producers to invest in long-term farm renovation, rehabilitation, and regenerative agriculture. Defaults, some argue, should be met with blacklisting.

 

Reality from producers: While higher prices are appreciated, production costs – labor, inputs, capital, logistics, and compliance – have surged at the same time. Liquidity evaporates quickly into this season’s expenses, debt repayment, household needs, and compliance readiness. Loan sizes have doubled, banks perceive higher risk, and affordable credit is increasingly out of reach. Meanwhile, some buyers are delaying or defaulting on contracts, and most are not extending working capital or shortening payment terms. Support for compliance from downstream buyers or “European operators” remains extremely limited.

 

For most smallholders, uncertainty, limited value capture, and disproportionate risk absorption are structural realities, not temporary anomalies. Short-term price rallies do not change this—and blacklisting farmers for defaulting ignores the underlying causes.

 

From VOCAL’s perspective, these consultations reinforce a clear message: today’s market conditions are an opportunity to acknowledge how volatility affects everyone in the chain and to push for sourcing models that share value and risk more equitably. Only by doing so can the sector build genuine resilience for farmers and for the coffee system as a whole.