Prices recovered in the middle of this year due to frost and drought in Brazil and COVID-19-related logistics snarls, and some farmers were able to break even for the 2020-2021 season that ended on September 30. Yet, with output still falling in Central America because of the resurgent Roya disease, making a living from farming coffee will remain a struggle. Output is just as important as price in determining profits, because it lowers costs by increasing economies of scale for inputs like seedlings, fertilizer, and pesticides. Roya first broke out in the region in 2012, and by 2014, over half of the coffee crops had been affected, before it was largely brought under control. The humidity brought by the two hurricanes of 2020, which themselves wreaked $3.3 billion worth of damage to regional economies, boosted the prevalence of the disease from low single digit percentages of coffee plants in the 2019-2020 season to 15% to 25% in 2020-2021.
‘Coffee crisis in Central America fuels record exodus north’, Reuters
