The coffee price hikes have stemmed from lower production in important coffee growing regions, particularly in top grower Brazil, reducing the availability of beans.
That’s the closest I could find in the article as to a reason. It’d be nice to know if it was just a bad year or if this is going to be a permanent challenge going forward due to climate change or some other factors.
Coffee is quite sensitive to environmental factors and only grows in certain specific regions as a result. Those factors are being upended by climate change. Coffee is going to very rapidly become a luxury product.
Billionaires don’t care. Twenty dollars or two dollars for a cup is effectively the same price to them; insignificant. It’s the rest of us that get fucked.
From what I’ve heard this is largely due to bad weather due to climate change, as I understand it, we should not expect coffee prices to ever go back to where they were.
For the past 4-5 years it seems prices have only gone up here. It’s more than triple now of what it used to be before Covid, and that’s only 5 years!But I’m not an expert, this is just what I’ve been seeing as a heavy coffee drinker in the supermarket, and what I’ve gathered from short news tid-bits.
Pretty much. I watched my favorite coffee hut (literally a hut that you drive up to) go from $3 large like 5 years ago to $4, then within a year hit $5. At that point, I stopped going, although funny enough, i did go there today since it was convenient and it’s now $5.50… I laughed and said yeah I’m definitely done now. As much as I like coffee, it’s now a high-end luxury item that I can no longer afford even occasionally due to everything else raising as well.
Coffee can be a pain to grow. As someone else mentioned, you have to have the right environment (rain, sunshine, soil, etc).
Adding to this is that it’s easier to grow other things that are in just as much demand. Vietnam has switched to growing durian fruit — less fussy and makes them just as much money.
Coffee is also quite carbon intensive.
It’s also due to very bad weather/floods in the second largest producer, Vietnam.
And since extreme weather events are increasing in intensity and frequency, it’s not going to get better (as a trend at least).
Looking forward to price hikes far beyond the actual cost to middlemen. The eggification of another good.
Already happened to chocolate. Raw cocoa is currently around 10% more expensive than it was at the same time last year - but chocolate products at retailers has shot up 40% or more. Including brands where cocoa isn’t the dominant component ingredient like milk chocolate.
Yet businesses like Lindt are celebrating a 7.8% increase in sales… Make it make sense to me cos I buy far less now. Who are the people who see these increasing prices and buy more 🤡
Source data: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/cocoa
Decades ago, in undergrad, I wrote a paper on recessions and the effects on everyday items. Oddly enough, the less money people have, the more likely that they will spend a tiny amount on luxury goods like chocolates. You add up all those people who buy small boxes of chocolates when they normally wouldn’t, and you’ve got your uptick in sales.
Yep, becomes a lot less important to save towards something when you have less than before. Those small luxuries are a mental health savior. That plus all the feel-good chemistry that happens with things like chocolate.
There’s no sense in saving towards something when it has suddenly become more than you could ever afford. Might as well buy some chocolate, it’s good for morale.
The GF and I were looking at houses a while back but never pulled the trigger. Fast-forward 4 or 5 years and now we will literally never be able to afford a house because the prices are fucking outrageous. We’ve given up and just spend our money on decent food instead.
NNOOOOOOOO. Don’t grind the market before you are ready to drink it! It’ll lose all the freshness!!
Time for everyone here to research: Chickory. Alternative to coffee and you can grow it at home.
So, how much longer until we have to start drinking soycaf?
