Coffee Prices

A cup of coffee is pushing $2 most places, and those fancy, flavored espresso drinks are running $4 or $5. So, on the surface it seems like the coffee market is booming.

Well, not if you're a coffee grower. Commodity prices of coffee beans are hitting new record lows year after year.

This has been going on for a while, due to combinations of factors. The commodity market for coffee is unregulated, dominated by few big buyers and many growers, and many source countries for coffee have unstable currencies.

It's really not clear what effect this might have on the future, there's a human cost going on which could have unpredictable political effects.

The BBC has a recent podcast on the coffee market.

The Boston Fed did a report on the international coffee market about 5 years ago which is still somewhat relevant today.

Even the Mennonites got into the act a few years ago.

Coffee Politics is a blog that keeps up with this stuff from the farmers perspective.

It's really all kind of a mess.

I first read about it when Bayesian Heresy pointed me to the BBC podcast.