A World Without Coffee: Why the Rise in Coffee Prices are a Bigger Deal Than You Think

There’s something deceptively stable about your morning cup of coffee—as perhaps it needs to be. Day after day, it’s everywhere; in your kitchen, on your table, on your desk, in the coffee area at your office, in every restaurant and cafe you’ll pass by on your commute. You can brew it at home. If you can't at home, grab some on the way to work, or brew a cup at the office. Pour over, espresso, instant, pods, canned, bottled, café, gas station, convenience store. It’s anytime, anywhere, forever and always. 

But beneath that dependable ritual lies an industry teetering on the edge of collapse. But what is at the core of the problem? What is the biggest threat? And how might we address it?

Well, the first step to understanding what needs to change is understanding what we once had, what we lost and what exactly is happening right now.

The ICO

There was a time when the coffee industry had an organizing force behind it—an entity with real weight, real structure, and real influence. That entity was the International Coffee Organization, or ICO. Established in 1963, the ICO was tasked with administering the International Coffee Agreement (ICA), a pact among producing and consuming countries to stabilize coffee prices and maintain a balance in supply and demand across global markets. The ICA imposed export quotas, coordinated production levels, and helped manage price volatility.

But, in 1989 the agreement fell apart due to some major issues. First, the system of quotas that stabilized prices often ended up disproportionately benefiting the largest producers—countries like Brazil—while leaving smaller producers unable to grow meaningfully. Second, key players in the global coffee trade were never members to begin with. And without near-universal participation, a quota-based system can’t function. If major producers and buyers are operating outside the system, what good is the system at all? Last, the United States—the biggest coffee consuming nation in the world by a wide margin—as usual, seemed to feel the need to throw its weight around, pushing for lower and lower prices, which ultimately became the last few nails in the coffin for the ICA. There are other factors and the story is quite a long one but that’s the gist of it. In 1989 the ICA fell apart and it has not recovered. 

Today, the ICO still exists, technically. It publishes reports, holds conferences, and counts dozens of countries among its members. These are all very important and I don’t mean in any way to downplay them or the great work the ICO does, but, their real regulatory impact is largely gone. In practice, the ICO has become more of a think tank—a place for dialogue and data rather than industry wide decisions and enforcement.

So, for better or worse, there was a time when the global coffee industry had a centralized body with real influence—an institution that could speak on behalf of producers, negotiate with consuming countries, and coordinate a response to market challenges. That’s largely gone now. And in a moment when the industry is facing existential threats, that absence of real cooperation is a dangerous vacuum.

The Existential Threat

Coffee prices are spiking—and there are many factors, but one in particular I think is not just the biggest, but also the most challenging and most overlooked.

The first factor is climate change. The same chaotic weather patterns that are wreaking havoc on crops like chocolate and wheat are hitting coffee-growing regions even harder. Brazil and Vietnam—two countries that together produce more than half of the world’s coffee—have both suffered major production losses due to droughts, frosts, and increasingly erratic growing seasons. These aren’t minor fluctuations. They’re climate-driven collapses in yield, and they’re happening more frequently, with greater severity.

When production falls, uncertainty rises—and uncertainty fuels speculation, the second cause of price increases. Investors bet on shortages, and push prices higher, not just for roasters but for consumers at every level of the market. What begins as a real-world crisis quickly becomes a financial one, amplified by the mechanics of global trade.

Then, as if climate change and speculation weren’t enough, the U.S. decided to toss a match onto the pile: tariffs. In one of the more inexplicable moves in recent trade policy, the United States—where extremely little coffee is grown—introduced sweeping tariffs on imported coffee. It’s a policy that doesn’t protect domestic farmers (because there are barely any), doesn’t help the consumer, and doesn’t fix anything.

But behind all of this—the weather, the market, the politics—is a slower, quieter crisis: coffee’s genetic fragility, which is in part the cause for climate being able to wreak as much havoc as it does.

Modern coffee is suffering from a genetic bottleneck. In simple terms, that means we’re working with an incredibly narrow genetic pool. Most of the world’s coffee can be traced back to a shockingly small number of plants. When coffee was first taken out of its native regions—mostly Yemen—it wasn’t shared in a way that preserved diversity. It was smuggled, seedlings taken from just a handful of trees and cultivated across colonial empires from the East Indies to Latin America. That founding population was tiny. Everything that followed was built on genetic repetition. And that problem was only exacerbated by breeding practices that select coffee for uniform traits like yield and consistency.

Today, what we’re left with is a global coffee system that’s operating on the thinnest possible biological foundation. These plants are nearly clones of one another. Over decades, the industry doubled down on uniformity—developing cultivars that produced evenly, ripened at the same time, and worked well for large-scale production. But those traits come at a cost. When everything is the same, disease hits everything the same, climate shifts impact everything the same. These are coffee trees engineered for control at the cost of resilience.

Doomsday

Let’s imagine, for the sake of argument, that tomorrow—God forbid—Brazil and Vietnam lost 80% of their coffee production. What would happen?

At first glance, some might see this as an opportunity. If people aren’t buying from Brazil or Vietnam, they’ll buy from us, right? More demand for other origins, higher prices, greater profits. And that probably would happen. But that’s far from the whole story. Very far.

What we’d see is a global shock to the system. Brazil and Vietnam don’t just participate in the coffee trade—they anchor it. Together they comprise more than 50% of global coffee production. If they go down, the entire market convulses. Prices wouldn’t just rise—they’d explode. And when prices explode, people don’t simply pay more. They drink less. Cafés close. Contracts break. Roasters fold. Importers implode. Shipping costs skyrocket. In short, the supply chain crumbles. It would be a big opportunity for Ethiopia, sure, but a much much much bigger opportunity for Red Bull.

And this is not imaginary. It’s a very real possibility and it’s not unprecedented. El Salvador lost 70% of its yield in 2014 due to disease and Sri Lanka (which at one time was the biggest coffee producer in the world) lost 80% in 1869. By 1890 Sri Lankan coffee was a memory. A bad frost here, a prolonged drought there—these aren’t edge cases anymore. They’re becoming regular features of the climate calendar. If Brazil or Vietnam loses even 30 to 40% of its yield, the pressure on the rest of the supply chain becomes unbearable. But if we start seeing 60%, 70%, or 80% production losses—whether from climate, pests, disease or combination thereof—we’re talking about a freefall. 

At that point, coffee stops being a daily ritual and starts becoming a luxury product. Scarce. Expensive. Out of reach for most people. It becomes wine or saffron—something served on special occasions, behind glass, with ceremony. Or worse, it fades into memory. A thing we used to drink. A flavor our grandparents talk about. Something you read about in books and can only find in some ultra-high-end boutique for $50 a cup. I’m not against more expensive coffee obviously, but it shouldn’t be the only thing available. 

The solution? Coffee’s Past Holds the Key to its Future…

Coffee’s past holds the key to its future, and the injustices of the past now have an opportunity to be at least partly rectified. Ethiopia gave the coffee fruit to the world, Yemen gave the drink, the culture, and the industry. But it was stolen—taken from its roots, planted in faraway colonial lands—and its origins were given not so much as a nod, let alone a red penny. Hundreds of billions of dollars move through the coffee industry every year, while Yemen exists as one of the ten poorest countries in the world and Ethiopia among the twenty-five poorest. In fact, the entire economies of Yemen and Ethiopia combined amount to about one third or one quarter of the size of the global coffee industry. It’s a real, real shame. 

But, these countries hold the key to saving coffee altogether. Within their mountains and forests, their terraces and heirloom plots, live the genetic varieties that could unlock the next chapter of coffee cultivation: wild strains and ancient cultivars with the resilience our current commercial plants lack. Varieties that have adapted over centuries to fight off pests, survive unpredictable weather, and thrive in marginal conditions—exactly the traits we now need to weather the storm ahead.

The problem? There’s no system in place to share this genetic diversity ethically, equitably or even logistically. This is where a revitalized ICO—or a completely new international body—could step in. The ICO was flawed, yes. But it was the only global framework we’ve ever had that attempted to manage coffee as a shared ecosystem. And now, we need a new version of that framework—one built not on quotas and pressure from consuming nations, but on collaboration, transparency, and long-term resilience.

A 21st-century platform for cooperation should prioritize the safe and equitable introduction of new varietals into major producing regions. But that must come with a system of royalties—real compensation for the countries that have stewarded this genetic wealth for centuries. Ethiopia and Yemen should not only be thanked; they should be paid. They should be seen not as relics of the past, but as the foundation of the future.

This isn’t charity. It’s survival.

Coffee isn’t just a crop. It’s a cultural technology. It’s an economy, a global ritual, a means of connection. And the only way to protect it is to return to its roots—not just geographically, but ethically. That means acknowledging the harm done, and building something better from it.

What’s needed now is political will, international cooperation, and respect for the roots—botanical, historical, and human—that made this industry possible in the first place.