The price of coffee has increased by 23% over the past four years.
Although coffee is still a relatively affordable product for most people, its price has increased significantly in recent years and as several experts have noted, this trend is expected to continue.
Several factors explain this price increase, including in particular the increase in production prices.
Since the beginning of 2024, the McDonald’s chain has offered the medium size of its brewed coffee at a price of $1.25, while Tim Hortons sells the same type of product for $1.93. According to economic columnist Pierre-Olivier Zappa, medium format at McDonald’s “has never been so inexpensive in the last ten years.”
The price of coffee is increasing significantly with companies like Starbucks, which sell their dark roast coffee for a price of $2.95.
As columnist Pierre-Olivier Zappa pointed out, the quality of the products offered varies depending on the chain.
Coffee enthusiasts, however, will have to come to terms with the fact that the price of coffee will eventually rise significantly as the world’s two largest coffee producers, Brazil and Vietnam, face weather conditions that affect harvests.
Sven Anders, a professor and agricultural economist at the University of Alberta, explained in an interview with La Presse: “We’re seeing some pretty dramatic changes in what we would otherwise call traditional normal weather conditions, and these have dramatic effects on the expected coffee supply for the next harvest season.”
UNICEF recently announced that tons of robusta coffee beans have been rendered unrecoverable in the fresh waters of the Mekong, due to a drought hitting Vietnam.
According to the International Coffee Organization, this drought, which would be the worst in Vietnam in 70 years, will inevitably lead to an increase in the price of coffee.
Note also that a 2022 study revealed that climate change will mean that approximately half of the regions where the most coffee beans are harvested today will no longer be viable by 2050.
Elizabeth Shapiro-Garza, associate professor of the practice of environmental policy and management at Duke University, recently said in an interview with La Presse: “Coffee is the canary in the coal mine of climate change and of its effects on agriculture. If you love your cup of coffee in the morning, climate change is absolutely going to affect the quality, availability and price of that cup of coffee.”
Finally, remember that according to the Los Angeles Times, other countries could eventually launch into coffee production.
