The growth of specialty coffee should create economic opportunities for more coffee producers as an affluent segment of consumers learns to appreciate bean quality, along with origin features like farm elevation, coffee varietals, and growing and processing methods. However, before producers, as well as their families and communities, can get excited about the economic promise buried in this end-market development, we must consider the prices they are currently able to negotiate for green specialty coffees. In general, producing-country pricing patterns and dynamics are not encouraging. Instead of being able to capitalize on the updated valuations that come from selling products that are differentiated in the market, specialty coffee producers remain subject to a pervasive commodity logic that governs valuations and compensation at their stage of the value chain.

The current structure of global coffee markets is such that specialty coffee growers have a hard time being adequately compensated for the work that they do on their farms and in their communities. The following Theory of Change governs the work that has been evolving out of Emory University over the last several years:

Our varied efforts focus on correcting the problematic market structure by simultaneously:

1. Changing the information environment. The Specialty Coffee Retail Price Index helps specialty coffee sellers and buyers track the evolution of retail coffee prices at the high end and low end of the market. The Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide helps to move sellers and buyers away from commodity price references.

2. Developing business capacity in producing countries. Investing in technical assistance, like the Grounds for Empowerment Business Tools Workshops, works to develop an updated entrepreneurial capacity among specialty coffee producers.

We are also working to change the market mindset. Instead of repeating default explanations about how futures markets align global supply and demand, data-backed insights describe cause-and-effect relationships that are relevant to the differentiated specialty market.