The word ‘resilience’ has been the focus of countless discussions in the coffee industry in recent years. From International Coffee Organization meetings to the Global Coffee Platform assemblies, to World of Coffee lectures, these conversations have centred on securing long-term coffee supplies amid climate change and geopolitical instability, all without destroying the world’s remaining forests, depleting soils, and interfering with human rights.

At the foundation of this complex problem is the understanding that coffee farmers are not only less resilient – less able to absorb and recover from shocks – than their counterparties when farming systems and supply chains come under pressure, but they are also less likely to adopt practices that could foster resilience in the long-term due to short-term risks.

The financing of agroecological or regenerative transitions is currently top of mind for leaders across the private and public sector. But what is less discussed are the economic solutions embedded in supply chains themselves, including price protection and fair procurement practices, that are also needed to enable change.

Looking at today’s coffee market, one might conclude that price protection for farmers is irrelevant, but it’s not.

As the 2026 Coffee Barometer clearly demonstrates, the recent upswing in the coffee market to record highs was not a long-awaited correction but rather evidence of underinvestment, overextraction, and outsourced vulnerability.

When the cyclical nature of the market meets increasingly unpredictable weather patterns, tens of millions of livelihoods are at risk. This is not evidence of a resilient system.

It’s time we recognise that the market will not ‘out’ without taking us all down with it. Perhaps the only time commercial roasters and traders treat coffee farmers as equal partners in business is when they expect them to equally absorb financial shocks related to volatile markets, rising production costs, and new market regulations.

Big coffee industry players have spent years and marketing budgets convincing the public that meeting farmers’ production costs is too expensive and even bad for business, while behind the curtain they know that the clock is ticking.

These roasters claim their coffee as ‘responsibly sourced’ by offsetting unsustainably low prices with landscape investments, knowing full well that what is needed is a ‘both, and’ approach.

For nearly three decades, specialty roasters relied on the false proposition that paying quality premiums results in sustainable livelihoods rather than predominantly covering the added expenses of variable labour, specialised knowledge, and compound interest rates.

Real ones know that some of the most highly sought-after micro-regions for world barista competitions suffer from outmigration, labour violations, and food insecurity because the specialty sector does not exist in a vacuum. In fact, it benefits from being built on the back of a failing commercial coffee industry.

Sector resilience requires income security. Full stop. In the absence of public policy and regulated markets, the coffee industry must rely on voluntary measures to prevent the evaporation of incomes when prices collapse, or harvests fail. This is where Fairtrade International comes in.

The Fairtrade Minimum Price is the only evidence-based pricing intervention that exists to provide a safety net for cooperatives when markets fail. For years, it has done just that: protected producers during prolonged periods of unsustainably low coffee prices to help cover production costs and enable ongoing investment into farms and farmer-owned cooperatives.

In December 2026, Fairtrade’s updated minimum prices for coffee will come into effect, reflecting new research in production costs and market conditions.

Additionally, the mandated (not negotiated) Fairtrade Premium supports locally led, self-determined investments for cooperatives to upgrade their business, transition farms to agroecological practices and improve social well-being.

Fairtrade’s Living Income Reference Prices are another way of approaching an economic safety net, looking beyond median production costs and close the income gap. Roughly 80% of the world’s coffee is produced by the family labour of 12.5 million smallholder farms.

Living Income Reference Prices are local benchmarks of what it costs to produce coffee while enabling farming households to earn a decent standard of living, taking into consideration production costs, realistic yields, viable farm sizes, and household living costs.

Credible price protection is not an obstacle to efficient markets; it is at the foundation of a resilient one. This should not be considered a radical proposition because every business understands that suppliers must cover their costs to remain in business – and agriculture should not be an exception.

Evidence-based benchmarks can help companies, traders, and policymakers align purchasing practices and complement the sector-wide farming-system transition. Companies that want resilient supply chains must move beyond compliance and confront a more fundamental issue of whether the people producing their raw materials can afford to keep producing them today.

This piece was originally published on the World Coffee Portal.