101. ICO's Coffee Development Report 2020: The Value of Coffee

Feb. 2, 2021

The International Coffee Organization’s new 2020 development report, “The Value of Coffee,” is now available to download as a .pdf from ICO’s website! 

Second in a series, it focuses on the international trade of coffee. The first report, "Growing for Prosperity", was published in November 2019. With that edition, the ICO launched this flagship economic publication to provide an analytical underpinning to the on-going Structured Sector-Wide Dialogue, a process initiated by the ICO as part of the implementation of Resolution 465. The 2019 document presents an in-depth analysis of the root causes and impact of the coffee price levels and volatility. A paper co-authored by Ruth Ann Church is one of the citations in this report, drawing on research conducted by Michigan State University and local partners in Rwanda in 2015.

Highlights of the 2020 Coffee Development Report:

• A smart mix of public-private dialogue and timely information is needed to maximize economic benefits for farmers.
• Social and environmental sustainability are all addressed — as they must be, since all three: economic, social and environmental — are inexorably intertwined.
• Empirical analysis of the coffee Global Value Chain (GVC) shows that:
• the value of annual coffee exports has more than quadrupled from US$8.4 billion in 1991 to US$35.6 billion in 2018, with non-producing countries having played a significant role.
• higher-income regions such as Europe and North America accounted for 96% of roasted coffee exports and 53% of soluble coffee exports in 2018
• contributions of the coffee GVCs to the UN Sustainable Development Goals are discussed
• resilience (a favorite topic on this blog!) of the coffee GVC to stressors such as climate change and the current global pandemic are also addressed.

The full report was officially launched on 28 January 2021. It will be followed by a roadshow that will include presentations of the key messages in Member countries, at development institutions and in political forums with the aim of mobilizing resources and support for the implementation of the main recommendations.