coffee prices are way up, but who’s benefiting?

Ever since I entered the coffee business more than 25 years ago, coffee farms have been impacted by depressed prices on the commodities market (the “C-Market”). These persistently low prices have long been the single biggest driver of poverty among the tens of millions of people who grow and harvest coffee.

This issue is widely recognized in our industry. Over the years, a number of efforts have been made to help farmers by putting a floor on coffee prices. Fair Trade guaranteed a minimum price to coffee cooperatives, while Direct Trade sought to go further by ensuring that an even higher price flowed directly to farms. Both models aim to shield farmers from the volatility and historically low levels of the C-Market.

But what happens when the price of coffee on the commodities market more than doubles in two years, as it recently did Does it mean that poverty in coffee farming communities has disappeared?

Colombia, August 2025

Higher prices certainly help, and more money is reaching coffee farmers than at any time in recent memory. Yet the real challenge is ensuring that the money makes its way to farmworker communities, where living conditions often remain dire.

On farms large enough to hire workers, the owners are rarely the ones living with dirt floors or roofs made of garbage bags. Those realities belong to the laborers — who often live far away from the farm in unsuitable conditions. Even when farm owners earn higher prices, the workers who make it all possible may still be left behind.

Honduras, February 2026

No existing model (whether Fair Trade, Direct Trade or otherwise) guarantees that even historically high green coffee prices translate into higher wages or better living conditions for farmworkers. That’s why we believe the most important work happens in the “last mile” — beyond what’s paid to the farm owner or cooperative. As coffee prices rise, it has never been more crucial to ensure that farmworker communities truly share in those gains.

– Jason Scherr, Founder & CEO