We often think of Brazil as this unstoppable coffee powerhouse, but it’s facing the same climate crises as smaller origins. From your trip there in 2024,what is the situation on the ground, and how do you think it affects other coffee-producing countries?

Climate change was the number one topic for every producer I met there, and the impact is visible. On one farm, I saw trees where the cherries had simply failed to mature because of a lack of rain; they looked like shrivelled raisins. That producer lost about half of his production that year. When I was there, it hadn’t rained in four months. In contrast, Vietnam, the other global giant in coffee production, is dealing with the exact opposite problem: too much rain. When the two largest producers in the world are hit like this, it creates massive volatility in the C Market (commodity price) on a global level, which we’ve seen swinging wildly between $2.90 and nearly $4.00 per pound. 

Beyond the weather itself, how are these shifts affecting the logistics and the cycles of coffee production?

It’s really turned the cycle on its head; for example, the "fly crop" (the secondary, smaller harvest in some countries) is sometimes becoming more productive than the main crop. This creates a logistical nightmare. For example, last year, Colombian decaf was hard to source because the volumes were so unpredictable. Processing facilities get overbooked because no one expected a "small" season to suddenly become a "big" season. In a global economy, you can't just shift manpower and shipping schedules overnight.

You mentioned a human element to this, specifically regarding labour and the next generation of farmers. Can you share some more thoughts on this?

What makes these challenges more difficult is that in many countries, the younger generation often doesn’t want to produce coffee, and this leads to a massive labour shortage. And, because climate change has shortened the window for picking in Brazil for example, if you don't have enough hands to pick the cherries exactly when they are ripe, you lose quality and volume. The coffee is there, but there’s no one to harvest it. Because of these unpredictabilities in coffee, many people choose to work on other farms that provide more stability.

It seems there is also a gap between the "scientific" way we think coffee should be grown and the traditional methods actually used on the farms. How does that play out?

We often take for granted that every farmer has access to the latest agricultural data, but many are just doing what their great-grandfathers did. I remember visiting Colombia, and learning that some farmers were pruning trees in ways that actually hurt their yield, simply because that’s the tradition. It isn’t my place as a buyer from Canada to tell them how to farm, and oftentimes, they simply don’t have access to the right resources. But, it’s incredible when we can support projects involving local agronomists—like Daniel Munoz. When information is shared between neighbours, it changes everything. Not everyone seeks out help or even realizes they need it, so for agronomists, like Daniel, bridging that knowledge gap is just as vital as dealing with the weather. But, experimentation requires resources and a safety net that many smallholders simply don’t have. Most are just focused on adapting to the season’s challenges with the limited tools they have.