Coffee Barometer 2026

The 2026 Coffee Barometer, produced as a joint effort by Conservation International, Ethos Agriculture, Solidaridad, and VOCAL, marks twenty years of tracking the global coffee industry — and its central finding is damning: despite historic price highs, the structural conditions undermining producers’ livelihoods remain entirely unresolved. High prices and devastating collapses are not separate crises; they are two phases of the same story. Risk stays concentrated at the origin while value flows the other way.

 

Ten percent of the retail cost of a pack of coffee is effectively subsidized through unpaid family labor by farming households — yet wealth accumulates at the consumption end through capsule premiums, shareholder distributions that dwarf sustainability budgets, and profits routed through low-tax jurisdictions. Of fifteen major companies assessed, not a single one discloses its pricing structures, contract durations, or premiums paid above the commodity price. Sustainability commitments exist alongside purchasing practices that change nothing.

 

The Barometer is unambiguous on responsibility: the transition to traceable, deforestation-free supply chains requires capital that smallholders cannot provide and income security they do not have. That burden belongs to buyers, not farmers. Lasting change requires a fundamental redesign of sourcing models, binding regulation, and verifiable disclosure — not more voluntary pledges.

 

Download the full 2026 Coffee Barometer below and see what a genuinely just coffee economy would have to look like.

 

Coffee Barometer 2026 (in English)

Company Assessments (in English)

Find the large graphics from the report and some photos in this folder. They are free to publish. Please credit the maker – see the exif data. 

 

Author(s): Ethos Agriculture, Solidaridad, Conservation International, and VOCAL