As the world experiences unprecedented weather challenges and decreasing coffee yields, countries like Brazil are betting on robusta to save the day. Photo credit: Jacob Yavin
Robusta is having a moment. Often considered an inferior alternative to its cousin arabica, both robusta production and its price have exploded in recent years alongside rising coffee demand.
Brazil is the world’s largest coffee producer overall, but Vietnam leads the way in terms of robusta, accounting for roughly 40% of the global market. Now, Brazil has set its sights on the top robusta spot as well.
According to a report in late September by the Dutch bank Rabobank, Brazil’s robusta production has grown from 19 million 60kg bags in 2020 to an estimated 24.7 million bags in 2025. Vietnam’s output, by contrast, is expected to be around 30 million bags in 2024/25, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
“We have seen a huge increase in robusta production,” says Bruna Costa of Bossa Coffee, a specialty Brazilian importer based in London. While Bossa is focused on arabica, Costa says that robusta’s potential is a topic of conversation throughout Brazil. “Coffee prices in general are so much higher, and everyone comments on how much more productivity robusta has.”
Rabobank’s report notes that although costs of implementing and growing robusta are relatively high, the returns can be enormous: robusta’s yields are almost 170% higher than arabica per hectare. At the same time, Brazil has millions of hectares of degraded pastureland, which the report says are suitable for conversion to agriculture; this would enable the country to expand its coffee production without resorting to deforestation.
While Brazil looks to boost robusta production, the other big producers aren’t sitting still. In Vietnam, several years of drought have impacted yields, although they are starting to recover — coffee exports over the first nine months of 2025 rose 7.4% compared to the same period last year. The value of those exports jumped 65%, which, according to the Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association (VICOFA), is down to the recent global coffee price rise. In 2024, robusta prices surged to their highest in 45 years, although the price has fluctuated over the past six months.
Vietnam’s positive harvest reports for 2025/26 have slowed that rise somewhat. However, prices are still high enough that VICOFA wants the government to encourage more investment in the sector, for example, by lobbying for a value-added tax exemption for green coffee.
Elsewhere, robusta is indigenous to Uganda, and it accounts for 85% of the country’s coffee production. The USDA forecasts a modest increase in Uganda’s exports over the next harvest season, rising 2.76% compared to the year before. According to Bloomberg, coffee earnings have more than doubled over the past twelve months, a result of the high commodity prices but also years of effort by authorities to encourage more production.
Challenges remain, of course. One of the benefits robusta has over arabica is that it is considered more resilient in the face of hot weather and drought, an issue farmers are increasingly facing as climate change takes hold. However, it is not a silver bullet. A 2020 Australian study found that robusta “is far more sensitive to temperature than previously thought,” noting that “production potential could decline considerably as temperatures increase under climate change.”