As the year 2025 comes to a close and during these first months of 2026, I have had the opportunity to visit coffee farms in different departments of the Colombian Coffee Axis. In every conversation with producers, something resonates that has kept me pondering these days: a sense of concern over persistent rains, uncertainty about the volatility of coffee prices, the appreciation of the peso against the dollar, and a shared feeling of navigating a complex moment with many uncertainties. Although each coffee farmer faces particular realities of soil, altitude, and varieties, they all agree that 2025 left difficult lessons and 2026 poses urgent questions.
The first half of 2025 will be recorded as one of the rainiest periods in decades. Precipitation exceeded the historical average by up to 50% in some producing areas. This excess moisture and cloudiness directly affected the flowering, which was seen as uncoordinated, incomplete, or simply weak. Without robust flowering, fruit formation is compromised from the start, which inevitably translates into lower harvest volumes.
I saw coffee plantations flooded where they had never flooded before, I saw impassable roads that had not been able to receive a truck for weeks, I saw fruits falling prematurely while still green because the plant could not support them with so much water, I saw producers with their hands on their heads, literally, standing in the middle of their coffee field looking at the damage without knowing what to do.
A few days ago, during one of my visits in Caldas, Mr. Hernando took me to tour the lots of his farm, and in all his experience as a producer for over 40 years working with coffee, he told me he has seen it all: droughts, pests, price crises, violence in the tough years, but this left him bewildered, as we stood in front of a lot that is normally his pride, the one that always produces the most, and we observed weak plants with yellowing leaves at the bottom due to excess moisture.
“Look,” he said, pointing to the branches, “when the flowering comes out uncoordinated, you already know that the harvest is going to start having problems. The plants bloom a little, then nothing, then a little more. We need complete and even flowering. Here we had like three different flowerings. How do I harvest that? When some fruits are ripe, others are just setting, this increases my labor costs and also generates inefficiency in the process.
He was absolutely right: The flowering of coffee is a critical moment that needs moderate water stress, that is, marked dry periods followed by rain for the plant to bloom massively. But when it rains all the time, that mechanism breaks, and the plants only seek to fulfill one of their most important missions: to preserve the species, and it is there that under these conditions, the flowerings come out staggered, weak, and incomplete, and without good flowering, there is a direct impact on production which translates into no good harvest and therefore no good income.
The most uncomfortable part of the visit was not only observing the affected crop, nor even the general feeling of discomfort among the producers, but seeing the helplessness on their faces. In the face of drought, there are still tools and solutions such as: irrigation, covers, mulch; in the face of pests and diseases, there are also technical responses such as integrated management, biological controls, or, if necessary, targeted applications of fungicides. But in the face of excess rain, the margin for action is drastically reduced; you cannot put a roof over five hectares of coffee, nor can you ask the sky not to rain. That is perhaps the hardest part to assimilate: when the problem is not the lack of technology or knowledge, but the magnitude of a climatic variable that overwhelms any capacity for control.
The numbers confirm the impact: in January 2026, Colombia produced 893,000 bags of coffee, representing a 34% drop compared to the same month the previous year. The close of 2025 left us with a production of 13.67 million bags, a decrease of 2% compared to 2024. Although this variation may seem moderate in aggregate terms, it is experienced more pronouncedly in the field, as that 2% national average hides dramatic realities in specific departments. Especially in Antioquia, Caldas, and Risaralda, where the blow was harder, with municipalities where the drop was between 15% and 20%.
Mrs. Amparo, on a farm in Jardín Antioquia, showed me her records, and she is one of the organized ones, the ones who write everything down in a notebook, from: how much fertilizer she bought, how many labor days she paid, how many kilos she harvested each month. “Look,” she said, flipping through the pages, “January 2024: 42 loads. January 2025: 28 loads. January 2026: 19 loads. Do you see the differences? And costs don’t go down, costs go up.”
At the end of the day, there are too many factors converging today in what could well be classified as a critical moment. The coffee tree's own physiological cycle plays a determining role: the crop naturally alternates between years of high production and years of moderate load. After an abundant harvest, the plant requires a recovery period to restore reserves and balance its productive structure, which is a normal biological behavior.
The problem arises when that “rest year” coincides with extreme climatic events. If excessive rains, low radiation, and sanitary difficulties are added to the lower physiological load, what should be a natural adjustment of the cycle transforms into a year of economic pressure.
Looking ahead to 2026, the technical projections of the National Federation of Coffee Growers estimate a production close to 12 million bags, about 1.7 million less than in 2025, representing an approximate drop of 12%. It is not just a statistical figure: coffee is the livelihood of nearly 540,000 families in Colombia. When national volume contracts at that level, it is not just a productive variation, but a structural tension for one of the economic and social pillars of the country.
While Colombia faces climatic difficulties and reserved forecasts in complex scenarios, Brazil is preparing for a historic harvest. According to the National Supply Company (Conab), Brazilian production in 2026 could reach 66.2 million bags, a growth of 17.1% compared to the previous year, this figure would exceed the historical record of 2020 (63.1 million) and to give you an idea of the magnitude: that is more than five times what Colombia will produce this year. If we gathered all of Colombia's coffee production, we would still need four more countries like Colombia to match what Brazil is going to harvest this year.
And it is not just about volume, but also about composition, as of those 66.2 million bags, approximately 44.1 million correspond to arabica, a growth of about 23% compared to the previous year, while 22.1 million are robusta, with an increase of 6.4%. This difference is not minor. Arabica, which is the type of coffee produced in Colombia, tends to stand out for its greater aromatic complexity, better acidity, and finer cup profile, which dominates the market for differentiated and specialty coffees. Robusta, on the other hand, has a higher caffeine content, more body, and a more intense profile; it is widely used in instant coffee and commercial blends, and is also key in many espresso formulations for its contribution of structure and crema.
More than a competition between qualities, it is about species with different characteristics and markets, whose proportion in the global supply directly influences prices, substitutions, and commercial dynamics. That Brazil has a growth of 23.3% in arabica is not good news for Colombia, because we compete directly in that segment. When there is an abundance of Brazilian arabica in the market, buyers have options, and when they have options, prices tend to decrease.
The market felt it immediately: in February 2025, the price of Colombian coffee on the New York Stock Exchange hit USD $4.00 per pound, a historic level. However, that euphoria was brief. By mid-year, the price had fallen to USD $2.80, and although it partially recovered to around USD $3.50, volatility remained present. At the close of January 2026, the price hovered around USD $3.45 per pound. What happened? Why that roller coaster? Brazil passed by and with it came the projections of record harvests, traders, speculators, and investment funds that move the market began to anticipate that there would be abundance, and when there is abundance, or it is expected that there will be, prices fall.
Vietnam, the world's leading robusta producer, also influenced this, as they had climatic problems in 2024 and 2025, which kept robusta prices at high levels, but for 2026, their production is expected to recover, and with more robusta supply, there is also downward pressure on arabica, because many roasters can substitute a percentage of arabica with robusta in their blends.
In addition to climate and international markets, Colombian coffee farmers face an economic factor that erodes their income: the appreciation of the Colombian peso. At the beginning of 2025, the exchange rate hovered around $4,409 pesos per dollar. By the end of the year, it had fallen to $3,757 pesos per dollar, an appreciation of approximately 14.8% for the year. In February 2026, the rate is around $3,641 pesos per dollar, do the math: the peso appreciated almost 15% in a year.
“And what does that have to do with coffee?”, someone who does not know the business might ask, but it has everything to do with it. Absolutely everything. I explain it with a real and concrete example: Let’s imagine that I harvest 10 loads of coffee, one load is 125 kilos of dry parchment coffee, I sell those 10 loads at the international price, which is currently USD $3.45 per pound of green coffee, after processing, one load of parchment yields approximately 100 kilos of green coffee, which is 220 pounds. At USD $3.45 per pound, each load generates approximately USD $759. The 10 loads: USD $7,590. Now, if I had exchanged those USD $7,590 in January 2025, when the dollar was at $4,409 pesos, I would have received $33,464,910 pesos. But if I exchange them in February 2026, with the dollar at $3,641 pesos, I receive $27,635,190 pesos.
What is the difference? $5,829,720 pesos. Almost six million pesos that disappeared, not because I worked less, not because my coffee is of worse quality, not because I made a mistake… Simply because the peso appreciated. Six million pesos is the salary for four months of a picker, it is what it costs to renew half a hectare of coffee, it is the six-month installment of the loan that many producers have at the bank, and it is simply the difference between ending the year in the positive or in the negative. For a coffee farmer who sells his product in dollars and converts to pesos, this means a direct loss of income. According to sector estimates, each load of coffee loses between $500,000 and $550,000 Colombian pesos just due to exchange rate effects.
Germán Bahamón, general manager of the National Federation of Coffee Growers, expressed it clearly: “For a country that lives off producing and exporting, such a rapid appreciation has a real cost: we lose competitiveness and reduce the income of those who generate foreign exchange.” And it is not just coffee that is suffering: eleven exporting guilds such as flowers, bananas, palm oil, textiles, and generally the entire export sector have raised their voices to say the same: the government’s external debt policy is artificially strengthening the peso and destroying the competitiveness of the productive sector.
What is happening? The government is borrowing money from abroad, dollars that enter the country and have to be converted to pesos, this massive influx of dollars causes the peso to strengthen, it is the basic supply and demand equation. But this strengthening of the peso does not reflect the productive reality of the country as it is artificial, temporary, and is affecting exporters to a greater extent.
When I explain this to city people, many do not understand. “But isn’t it good for the peso to be strong?”, they ask me. I respond: “Good for whom? For the importer, yes, but for the producer and exporter, no.” While producers lose due to the appreciation of the peso, production costs do not retreat, the minimum wage has increased, and although there is uncertainty about what may happen, inputs including fertilizers are more expensive because they depend on the international price of oil and gas, transportation costs have risen, and interest rates for loans remain around 10.25%. Producers face a financial scissors: they earn less for each exported dollar but spend more on each purchased input.
There is one more factor that tends to go unnoticed by the final consumer but is critical to understanding price dynamics, and that is the level of global coffee inventories. At the close of 2025, global inventories stood at 20.1 million bags, a figure that barely covers global consumption for a month and a half. This is the fifth consecutive year that inventories have decreased. Certified inventories on the New York Stock Exchange fell to 771,576 bags in March 2025, levels not seen in years. In London, where robusta coffee is traded, inventories dropped to 1.13 million bags. This situation causes the market to operate with the minimum possible cushion, amplifying price volatility in the face of any climatic or logistical news.
The paradox is evident: low inventories that theoretically should sustain high prices, but a projection of record production in Brazil that counteracts that pressure. The market oscillates between nervousness over the scarcity of reserves and relief from the arrival of fresh Brazilian coffee. This duality defines the speculative tone that currently dominates prices. My goal as an agricultural professional is not only to understand plants from their pure agronomy but also to be a source of communication with knowledge, with criteria, and ultimately more than bringing figures that alarm us, to reflect on what I believe can improve and what to do to mitigate this complex situation of Colombian coffee today. Therefore, my reflection is based on a concept that is already being widely discussed: climate resilience that invites producers to adapt and resort to tools that allow them to continue producing but not in the same way; it is inevitable that climate change will continue to occur and with it the probabilities of rising temperatures, the occurrence of extreme events like the one we saw a few days ago in Córdoba, and changes in sensitive regions like the poles, which generate adverse effects in our country and the world, forcing us to change.
But what does climate resilience mean in real terms? It means that your farm can withstand three weeks of rain without the coffee roots rotting, it means that when an unexpected two-month drought comes, your plants do not die, that extreme temperature fluctuations do not destroy your flowerings, or that your production system has the flexibility to absorb climatic shocks without collapsing. There is a strategy that is emerging strongly among the most innovative producers and has the potential to radically change the way we produce coffee in Colombia: agroforestry systems.
But be careful, I am not talking about simply planting a few trees scattered in the coffee field because it looks nice or because a government official comes to say that trees should be planted. I am talking about designed, planned agroforestry systems, technically managed to fulfill specific functions. Here are some key elements based on what I have seen in the farms that are managing this climate crisis best in a resilient system:
- Strategic regulated shade: not just any tree in any place, nitrogen-fixing trees (coffee walnut, guamo, carbonero), spaced to provide 30-40% coverage. This regulates temperature, maintains soil moisture, reduces evaporation, and protects against hail and frost. Mr. Alberto in Caldas explained to me: “With direct sun all day, when there is drought, the coffee suffers a lot, and when there is excessive heat, it gets stressed. With the right shade, the plant withstands extreme moments better.”
- Live barriers and covers: Vetiver, citronella, king grass on level curves, control erosion, filter water, provide biomass, on steep slopes, this is not optional. I saw farms where after a heavy rain, the lot without live barriers had lost 20 centimeters of soil in some points, while the lots with intact barriers.
- Integrated income diversification: it is not just about having coffee and something else, it is about everything working together: bananas that provide temporary shade and food, avocados that provide permanent shade and income, citrus on edges, and even a circular system that involves chicken production that serves as a source of inputs in the crops.
- Smart water management: drainage channels where there is excess water, rainwater harvesting where it is lacking, infiltration instead of runoff, and mulch to retain moisture.
- Living soils, not dead soils: constant organic matter, on-farm composting, efficient microorganisms, zero tillage. A healthy soil with good structure can absorb double the water without flooding and retain it twice as long without drying out.
- Specialty coffees: processing coffee in microlots to access markets that value traceability and differentiated quality, with superior margins.
- Cooperativism: partnering with other producers to negotiate better prices, access cheaper credit, and share processing infrastructure.
- Risk management: although still little known among small producers, futures contracts and currency hedges managed collectively can mitigate volatility.
- Certifications: obtaining sustainability, organic, or fair trade seals that open doors to buyers willing to pay premiums for environmental and social responsibility.
- Renewal of coffee plantations: planting varieties resistant to climate change and diseases, such as Castillo or Cenicafé 1, taking advantage of subsidized renewal programs.
- Use of technological tools: HARVIS, an artificial intelligence agent specialized in agriculture and livestock, which is allowing producers to monitor climatic variables in real-time, record production data, analyze costs, and project future scenarios.
HARVIS facilitates access to analysis that previously required extension workers or external consultants. From a cell phone or tablet, the coffee farmer can consult price trends, receive specific climate alerts for their area, keep records of flowerings and harvests, and obtain personalized recommendations on agronomic management. This democratization of technical information is especially valuable for small and medium producers who do not have specialized management teams. Additionally, tools like this allow for the construction of historical databases for each farm, facilitating the traceability that more and more international markets demand. In a context where the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) will come into effect at the end of 2025, having verifiable digital records can be the difference between accessing premium markets or not. But the individual strategies I mention here are not solely the producer's responsibility; they also need a favorable institutional environment. If Colombia wants to continue being a reference for coffee in the world, it needs to provide support for resilient coffee farmers to continue their productive system:
- From the government: a currency policy that does not destroy export competitiveness, loans with reasonable rates and emergency lines for climatic impacts, responsible fiscal management that avoids artificial appreciations of the peso, and the establishment of regulations that control price increases in agricultural inputs.
- From the Federation: agile activation of the Stabilization Fund when prices fall sharply, transparent communication with international markets, and greater technical support in the field to implement climate management systems.
- From cooperatives and associations: facilitating access to specialty markets, training in new processing techniques, collectively managing price and exchange rate hedges.
- From the private sector: paying fair prices that recognize quality, not taking advantage of moments of weakness to buy at bargain prices, investing in storage and processing infrastructure in coffee-growing areas.
- From research: developing even more climate-resistant varieties, researching agroforestry systems that integrate coffee with other species, generating specific studies by coffee-growing area with practical recommendations.
This storm, like all storms, will pass; macroeconomic crises eventually resolve, one way or another. What will remain when it passes is the same thing that has remained after all previous crises: the capacity to innovate, to resist, to adapt, to continue believing in coffee as a life project. And in that, Colombian coffee farmers continue to be experts.
Because at the end of the day, when I return from the farms with my pants full of mud up to my knees, heavy boots of clay, a tired body but a soul full of stories, I understand something I did not fully understand before: “Coffee is not just a crop. It is much more than that.”
It is identity, it is knowing where you come from, what your grandparents did, what you will leave to your children. It is the pride of saying “I am a coffee farmer” and that it means something. It is resistance, it is staying there when everything indicates that you should give up, it is getting up after a bad harvest and planting again, it is believing that next year will be better, even though last year you thought the same and it was not true. It is community, it is neighbors helping each other during the harvest when one does not have enough labor, it is the municipal committees where common problems are discussed, it is sharing knowledge: “this worked for me, try it” it is knowing you are part of something bigger than your own farm. It is territory, it is knowing every hill, every creek, every lot of your farm with an intimacy that only constant work gives, it is knowing where the sun hits hardest, where water accumulates when it rains, where coffee blooms first. It is culture, it is the coffee cultural landscape recognized by UNESCO. It is the architecture of coffee houses, muleteering, trova, the coffee festival, and all the cultural expressions that were born around this crop. And that, all of that, is not quoted on the New York Stock Exchange, does not appear in the government’s econometric models, does not enter into the calculations of traders who buy and sell coffee contracts without ever having seen a coffee plantation. But it exists, it is real, and it is what keeps us here when cold numbers would say we should leave. So yes, this season is tough. Next year will probably be too. There are structural problems that will take years to resolve, if they are resolved at all. The appreciation will not change overnight. Brazil will continue to be a giant. Climate change will continue to make rains more unpredictable. But as long as there are coffee farmers willing to keep trying, Colombian coffee will be there. Because we learned long ago that crises are not the end; they are part of the journey... And the journey continues. See you in the farms. With mud on our boots and coffee in our hands. That is our place. And there we remain.