KANSAS CITY — Coffee futures prices in New York and London have joined cocoa futures and cash US egg prices in setting record or multi-year highs in 2024 and 2025 amid globally tight supplies with little easing seen near term.
ICE Futures US New York arabica coffee beans set consecutive record highs since late January, topping at more than $4 per lb for the first time ever in the Feb. 5 session, up more than 25% since the first of the year, adding to gains of 70% in 2024. London robusta coffee bean futures also reached record highs in late January before backing off slightly.
Coffee is grown in more than 70 countries, but one — Brazil — dominates (as it does in soybeans, sugar cane, oranges and certain other commodities), and swings in production there can influence global supplies and prices.
But production in Brazil is trending lower, according to Conab, Brazil’s national food supply agency. In its first estimate for 2025 (2025-26 marketing year) in late January, Conab forecast Brazil’s coffee bean production at 51.8 million bags, down 4.4% from 2024, due mainly to the worst drought in history in 2024, which also negatively affected production last year, followed by late-arriving rains. Arabica bean production was forecast at 34.7 million bags, down 12% from 2024, in part because it’s an “off year” in the biennial cycles that alternate between higher and lower production. Brazil’s robusta production was forecast by Conab at 17.1 million bags, up 17% because of beneficial rains in the top robusta region. Adding to the tightness in supply from Brazil, farmers there have been slow to sell beans in anticipation of higher prices in 2025-26, after selling into a rising market in the prior year.
Meanwhile, Comexim, one of Brazil’s five largest coffee exporters, on Feb. 3 forecast Brazil’s 2025 coffee production at 63.2 million bags, down 1.8% from 64.35 million bags in 2024, because of adverse weather. Arabica production was forecast at 39.9 million bags, down 12% from 2024, and robusta at 23.3 million bags, up 24%. Exports in 2024-25 were estimated at a record 47.5 million bags, dropping to 44.9 million in 2025-26. On the downside, strong exports in 2024-25 resulted in low carryover stocks, exacerbated by lower production in 2025.
Brazil produced a record of about 70 million bags of coffee beans in 2020.
The rise in futures prices has been boosted by speculators who have been adding to their long (bullish) positions.
For background, the US Department of Agriculture in its December Coffee: World Markets and Trade report, forecast 2024-25 global coffee bean production at 174,855,000 60 kg bags, down 1,380,000 bags, or 0.8% from its June forecast but up 6,851,000 bags, or 4.1% from 2023-24. The increase is a bit misleading because it’s mostly the result of higher production in Vietnam and Indonesia, the world’s first and third largest producers of robusta coffee. But the world generally prefers arabica coffee, and the largest producer of that variety is Brazil.
The USDA forecasts total 2024-25 coffee bean production in Brazil at 66,400,000 bags, up 100,000 from 2023-24 (arabica up 500,000 bags, robusta down 400,000 bags). The USDA will issue a 2025-26 projection in June.
Of the total world production, 56% are arabica beans (traded in New York futures) and 44% are robusta beans (traded in London futures), per the USDA. Brazil dominates arabica bean production at about 46% of the total, followed by Colombia (13%), Ethiopia (8.5%), Honduras (5.4%) and Peru (4.4%). Vietnam is the largest robusta coffee bean producer with 38% of the global total, followed by Brazil (27%), Indonesia (12%), Uganda (7%) and India (6%).
Brazil accounts for 38% of total global coffee bean production, with Vietnam a distant second at 17% and other countries at less than 10% individually.
Arabica coffee beans are the most popular globally with dominant taste and other attributes varying by variety. Robusta coffee beans tend to be more bitter and are used primarily in instant coffee, expresso and as “filler” in some ground coffee.
A drop-off in chocolate demand was slow to develop after record highs in cocoa bean futures prices were set in April 2024 and again later in the year, in part a result of some processors and chocolate makers having contracted at lower prices well in advance. But as those contracts expired and the higher costs were passed along the supply chain, a drop-off in cocoa bean grind (an indication of demand) became evident in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Whether coffee will follow a similar trajectory remains to be seen, in part because many consumers appear to be willing to pay high prices for their favorite coffee drinks.