Coffee Keeps Its Mojo: Producers Overcome Pandemic Obstacles

"Coffee lovers, here's something to be grateful about. Unlike paper towels, disinfectant or yeast, coffee has never been hard to find during the pandemic."

"It has remained widely available on supermarket shelves even though COVID-19 has been particularly bad in some of the world's largest coffee growing nations. Brazil, which has recorded more cases than any nation other than the United States, is the world's top producer of coffee. India, Mexico and Colombia all rank in the top ten globally for both COVID cases and coffee production. Other major coffee exporters including Peru and Uganda have found themselves cut off by border closures and lockdowns."

"'It's natural to think that the harvesting of the coffee crops may be disrupted or perhaps badly disrupted,' says Steven Hurst, a coffee trader based in London. "But quite honestly and quite frankly, we've seen relatively little, if any, evidence of that.'"

"Hurst's company Mercanta, The Coffee Hunters, buys coffee from all over the world. He says the origin of the beans is a central part of the product he's selling. It's not just Arabica beans, it's shade-grown Arabica from Peru. Or it's coffee from a small farmer collective in Uganda."