Good agricultural practices (GAPS), widely promoted in the coffee lands, may actually depress profits. That is one of the findings in a newly released report summarizing agricultural research papers prepared by RD2 Vision for the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA).
The report was commissioned in 2015 to answer the question: How do we ensure a stable coffee supply as well as a stable and profitable income for farmers? RD2 Vision did a strategic review and presented its findings at the Avance sustainability conference in Guatemala.
“This review found that yield increases with higher costs per hectare and, therefore, production yield is not necessarily correlated with farm profitability,” SCA wrote. Increasing yield typically increases the cost per hectare to produce coffee, especially in the short term, and hence may decrease a farm’s profitability.
“The studies show that farms investing less than $2,000 [per hectare] can count on making a profit at a variety of yield levels, whereas coffee farms that invest more than $2,000 [per hectare] require high yields and/or high prices to achieve profitability. On average, production cost per pound should be less than US$2.50, but that figure depends more on the market price for coffee than the cost per hectare.”
Learn more: https://sca.coffee/research/