The year 2020 has long captivated the coffee sector’s imagination as the culmination of the sustainability transformation process set in motion after the 2002 coffee crisis. Over the past decades, development of sustainability solutions has been picking up pace and is rapidly expanding in numbers, scope and global presence. In general, it seems the constraints and potential solutions are known, but a widely agreed strategy for achieving sustainable links between coffee production and coffee consumption remains elusive. This is due to the sector’s inclination to focus on continuous growth of production to meet global demand. This means that even if some specific gains are
achieved at farm level, they are never sufficient to sustainably transform other links in the value chain, like trade and consumption. This 6th edition of the Coffee Barometer reflects on how the coffee sector could create truly systemic changes that are sustainable and impactful, instead of limiting itself to only managing a confusing set of issues, problems and contradictions. While the Covid-19 pandemic has delivered the biggest and broadest value chain shock in recent history, it is only the latest in a series of disruptions that has exposed the fragility of the global coffee sector.