Drought in Brazil ignites global coffee prices January 21, 2025

Moacir Donizetti lost hectares of coffee to a fire caused by drought last year

By AFP - Agence France Presse

Drought in Brazil ignites global coffee prices.

Facundo FERNÁNDEZ BARRIO

Brazilian coffee producer Moacir Donizetti first smelled the smoke and then watched in despair as a fire consumed his family's coffee plantation last year.

The 54-year-old was one of hundreds of farmers affected by a brutal forest fire in the state of São Paulo, where years of intense heat and irregular rainfall are likely to increase the cost of an espresso or latte in places as far away as Paris, New York, or Tokyo.

Brazil, the world's largest coffee producer and exporter, had its hottest year on record in 2024 and a record number of forest fires.

Residents of the municipality of Caconde believe the fire started due to the uncontrolled burning of garbage, but experts attribute its scale to drought conditions exacerbated by climate change.

“It was desperate: to see the flames advancing, destroying our plantation, reaching twenty meters from my house,” said Donizetti.

His family fought the fire for four days on their remote farm in the mountains of the Atlantic Forest, losing five hectares of coffee - a third of the family's production area.

Next to the burnt and blackened coffee plantations, he estimates that his land will take three or four years to produce again.

The loss is compounded by several years of unpredictable weather and disappointing harvests in Brazil.

“For about five years the country has been very dry, sometimes it doesn't rain for months,” said Donizetti. “It's also gotten much hotter, it's unbearable.”

- Investing more to produce less

In 2024, Brazil was responsible for more than a third of the world's coffee production.

A bad harvest in the Latin American giant has a significant impact on international prices.

Arabica coffee, the most popular variety, reached its highest price since 1977 in December, quoted at $3.48 per pound on the New York Stock Exchange.

“I've been working with coffee for 35 years and I've never seen a situation as difficult as the current one,” said Brazilian coffee grower and consultant Guy Carvalho.

“The high temperatures and irregular rainfall are forcing us to invest more to produce the same or even less than we did in the past,” he added.

“After the last big harvest in 2020, we've always had some kind of weather problem.”

Carvalho said that the high prices were largely explained by “frustration” with the disappointing harvests between 2021 and 2024 and the gloomy forecasts for 2025.

Geopolitical factors, such as possible US tariffs and future European Union regulations on deforestation, also contributed to the higher prices.

- Adapting to climate change

Some Brazilian coffee producers are adopting new strategies to adapt to the increasingly unpredictable climate.

In Divinolândia, another small coffee-growing town in the state of São Paulo, producer Sergio Lange opted for shade-grown coffee - an ancient technique used in places like Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee.

Planting coffee bushes under the shade of trees protects the plants from excessive heat and allows them to ripen more slowly, producing a larger, sweeter bean with greater market value.

Lange and 50 other colleagues have been applying a “regenerative coffee cultivation model” since 2022, in which the crop is planted alongside other species, grown without pesticides, and depends on a natural water source from the mountains.

“At first, productivity drops, but we expect fantastic results in four or five years,” he said.

He pointed to climate change as having a “severe” impact on coffee production.

“Producers who don't adapt will find it difficult to stay in business,” he warned.

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