Recently, according to media reports, Starbucks partnered with the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation (FNC) to distribute 55.7 million coffee seedlings to local coffee farmers, as part of a program to support Colombian growers.

It is reported that this is Starbucks' Fincas C.A.F.E. Practices Más Productivas program, which was first announced in November 2020 with an initial goal of distributing 23 million coffee seedlings, and later the program was expanded in April 2022 to provide an additional 22 million coffee seedlings. The goal is to provide seedlings of rust-resistant and berry disease-resistant varieties to help Colombia renovate its coffee plots.

The initiative has benefited more than 17,000 coffee growers across 17 departments in the country, supported the renewal of 7,200 hectares of resistant coffee varieties in Colombia, and improved farm productivity and profitability. In addition to distributing coffee seedlings, free fertilizer is also provided to farmers to support the early stages of coffee plant growth and to incentivize farmers to continue renovating their coffee farms and improve their long-term productivity.

This is a great help for Colombia's coffee industry. Last year, Colombia's coffee industry was affected by the El Niño phenomenon, and coffee production declined. By August and September of this year, drought swept across the whole of South America, and the agricultural industries of countries such as Brazil, Colombia and Peru were affected considerably, facing not only drought but also the threat of forest fires.

According to a report from Colombia's National Unit for Risk and Disaster Management, due to the dry environment and strong winds that caused the fire to spread, nearly 11,000 hectares of land in the country were burned, and large areas of forest, vegetation and farmland were destroyed by the fires. In addition, water levels in many rivers and reservoirs dropped significantly, by 80% to 90%, leading to insufficient water resources, and irrigation water for crops such as coffee was restricted, ultimately causing coffee production to decline continuously during the period from July to September.

It was not until October, when Colombia entered the rainy season and the effects of the drought were alleviated, that coffee production gradually rose, and the market is currently optimistic about Colombia's future coffee production. According to FNC's forecast, by the end of the 2023/24 coffee year, coffee production could reach 12.8 million bags (60 kg/bag), 20.2% higher than the cumulative total of the previous coffee year.

In addition, the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) of the United States Department of Agriculture recently released its annual market report on Colombia, forecasting that Colombia's coffee production in the 2024/25 market year could reach 12.9 million bags, thanks to the current favorable climatic conditions and the country's improvements in agronomic practices, and according to statistics, about 87% of the country's coffee-growing areas are planted with coffee varieties resistant to leaf rust. In addition, Colombia's domestic coffee consumption will reach 2.3 million bags, a year-on-year increase of 4%, so coffee exports in 2024/25 are expected to be 12 million bags.

Currently, because Brazil has suffered severe weather, the market is generally pessimistic about Brazil's next coffee production and supply, and combined with factors such as logistics and shipping delays at Brazilian ports, geopolitics and possible US tariffs, Arabica coffee prices rose sharply in November, reaching a 47-year high.

Although recently there has been a fair amount of good news indicating that Colombia's coffee industry has improved and that Colombia's coffee production has grown, the growth is relatively small, so the market believes that coffee prices will not ease even by 2025.

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