This is going to be a hard year for everybody because the price is going down and I can't sell my coffee cheap at all. If I do, then it's going to be very difficult to continue. Do you ever feel like you're listening to the podcast and wishing you could step behind the scenes, join the conversation, and really connect with other coffee industry folks who share your values? That's exactly what our monthly Patreon live discussion group is all about.
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Head over to patreon.com/mapforforward or check the show notes for links. If you're already a Patreon backer, thank you for your support. Welcome to The Daily Coffee Pro by Map for Forward, friends. I'm your host, Lee Safar, and this is unfortunately the final episode in what has been a truly spectacular series with Ana Donais from Cafe Primitivo in Quindío, Colombia.
Ana is a coffee producer and she also takes care of selling all of her coffee. So if you are looking... Ana is not an advertiser on the podcast, but if you are looking for great coffee from Colombia, get in contact with Ana. The details will be in the show notes and she will remind you of those details at the end of this episode.
In this series, we're talking about the reality of being a smallholder coffee farmer in this coffee crisis in 2026. And in this episode, we're going to be talking about whether we have a clear path ahead. And in particular, if this volatility continues, what does the path ahead look like? So Ana, I'm just going to ask you that as it is.
If we look at the volatility, as you said in a previous episode, you're like, Lee, we're only a month into it and I'm already exhausted. I can't believe it's only been a month. So knowing that this is how the year started off, 2026 doesn't look like it's going to be any easier than 2025 by any stretch. So if the volatility continues, what does a future for coffee farmers, let's say just in the next, until the end of this year, what kind of short-term, medium-term, and long-term path are we looking at?
Lee, I am very stressed out for this year. I feel like this year is going to be very difficult for us. I'm seeing how the coffee price is dropping really, really fast. And I don't see this, we're going to talk about the sea market, I don't see this stopping anywhere.
There's nothing that I feel like this is going to stop going up and down because there's just so many forces that affect the price of the sea market on the New York stock. So for me, I'm going to talk about the different volatility that we talked about in the first episode. Okay. So one type of volatility is the number that we see on the sea market.
And I feel like that's one type of volatility that we can, as an industry, work on. So that's why just trying to go far away from that price because it's not something sustainable for us, at least. So, but there's other volatilities. And at the end, I'm sure that saying that the volatility is going to stop, it's just nobody, it's somebody, it's like being too naive.
Climate change is the first driver of volatility, and this is not going to get better this year at all. So that's going to continue. If we see at the currency, politics around the world is just crazy and it's going to continue to be crazy. And that's another volatility that's not going to stop.
And for me, the only way that we can survive 2026, I'm going to talk about 2026 because this is just still what we're all listening and we all want this advice, trust me. It's by understanding where, I'm going to talk about my business, where am I at my business? How do I need to sell my coffee? How much of a production I think I'm going to get, right?
Understanding all of these climate change and everything that affects directly my yield. And with that, try to have those conversations with my clients. And this is going to be a hard year for everybody because the price is going down and I can't sell my coffee cheap at all. If I do it, then it's going to be very difficult to continue or I'll have to be something else.
That's something that we haven't really spoken about in this series yet. Like people understanding that just because the sea market is going down, that doesn't mean that your coffee is going to go down in price. And again, we got a number four of what I said in the last episode. If coffee farmers start to say that to their roasters, just because the sea market, the price is going down on the sea market, that doesn't mean that your coffee is going down.
That pricing is for the corporate side of this industry. The pricing that we have to work off is for the independent business owner, the smallholder farmer side of the industry. And that is a new pricing structure. I'd invite everyone to go and listen to the series with Sean Warner from the Honduran Coffee Alliance.
We talked about coffee pricing for five episodes. That was what that was and how should we be pricing coffee and things like that. We need coffee farmers to start saying to the people who are buying their coffee, we are no longer associated with the sea market. You can talk to me about how much it's going down all day, every day.
I don't care. This is the price of my coffee. And if that person says no, I hope that coffee farmers understand the reality of the fact that there is no coffee. And so if this person says no, bye-bye.
Figure out how to find more customers. Remember when you were in the mastermind group and we talked about acquisition strategies. We focused really heavily on how to find more customers. The importance of learning how to bring in new leads into your business is so important for a coffee farmer.
And this is, again, where I say, like, you've got to grow up, right? Learn that process of how to acquire new leads. Where can you find leads? And they're not all just at trade shows.
I promise they're not all at trade shows because the roasters who could be buying your coffee would rather be spending the money on your coffee than going to a trade show. The good folks, the good buyers, they're not wasting their time on a trade show or their money on a trade show. So what are some of the other things that you see about the continued volatility and how people are going to navigate that? Let's say more in the long-term.
Do you have any new ideas about that? Yeah, I feel like in the long-term, we need to understand each other and at the end, work so that everybody can have a future. Like, if we can all work together as an industry, if we do have those conversations. And for me, that's the only way.
That's going to be the only way for us to continue through this volatility times that are not going to stop. So it's going to be volatile for everyone and not only 2026, but for a long time. And I know you said that you're very stressed right now. And it's not for me to say whether, you know, for good reason or not good reason, but I'm going to say for good reason.
We're all very stressed right now. And the world is in quite a chaotic place for many, many reasons. In chaos can come beautiful things. And I guess if I'm hopeful about anything, it's that people are going to start seeing each other, as you just said, and recognising how important it is to see each other when everything is so fucking crazy.
I didn't even know the world could be this crazy. And I don't even think we've hit the peak of it. I don't think we're even close to the peak of it. But what I'm excited about, again, I'm sorry, folks, to reference the discussion group, but it really has been crazy, crazy inspiring to see a group of 35 people come together and try and solve problems together.
That's the right word for it. It's beautiful. It's beautiful to watch people wrestle with problems and disagree, but still be working towards, like, hey, we need to solve some of these problems because we're all having them. We're all having these problems.
Maybe in different ways, but we're all experiencing very many layers of this crisis. And I remember back when we started this podcast, the price of coffee was below a dollar. And farmers were committing suicide. And they were cutting their coffee crops down.
And then when coffee went to over $4, coffee farmers were committing suicide. And that wasn't because they were cutting their crops down. That was because nature was taking their crops away from them. And they couldn't figure out how they were going to get through this.
The only way we get through this is together. So I really love this kind of idea that you've got about, like, we've got to see each other. We've got to be present for each other. It sounds like such a woo-woo thing, but that's the reality.
But the reality of it is, right now, you've got roasters taking care of roasters and cafe owners taking care of cafe owners. And the rest of the supply chain If we look for over the next couple of years, we might have an increase in supply in two years, a year and a half, if the weather behaves, but there's no guarantees there either. Do you think about that as a coffee producer? Do you think, like, what is going to happen when all of this coffee that's being planted right now starts to flood the market?
I don't see a lot of coffee flooding the market. Like, I don't see that coming. Like, of course, I see some coffee production, coffees that are being planted, that are some coffee, some new players, let's say, of course, but at the same time, I see climates bringing down the yields 50%. I see how it is affecting a lot of the world supply around the world, and I don't see a lot of people cutting the trees because to have good quality coffee, you have to go up into the mountains.
I don't know what it is. Elevation. Elevation. I think it's, I don't, and if now that we're seeing a price, the price go down again in the sea market, just as some people are, wait, I'm going to put my ideas in order.
I love it. Just as some people plant coffee when the price is high, there's hundreds of people and a lot of people that will change their crop when the prices are low. You know what I mean? Yes.
Yes, because the price always goes up and down, and there's people that go with how whatever is giving money. And I've seen farms go into coffee, go to coffee, and like between years. And there's always less hectares, at least where I live, every year, like lower and lower and lower. Exactly.
Thank you. Yes. Right. So we've heard this quite a lot over the last couple of years, is that the part of the coffee crisis is that less farmers are farming.
And that farm isn't getting sold to somebody else. Like, let's say the next generation doesn't want it. When they're selling that farm, they're not selling it to somebody who wants to farm coffee. They're selling it to a developer or they're selling it to hotels or whatever.
It's going to get turned into something that's not agricultural land. And what we're starting to see is the amount of coffee that's being grown in hectares. We're starting to see that shrink all over the world. Exactly.
I mean, again, we have to grow up as an industry and understand that this is the threat that the coffee crisis is introducing to us. What do you see as a hopeful thing for the future? I see a percentage of the industry. I won't say it's the majority of the industry, but I see a percentage of the industry that is willing to work together.
And that when we are willing to work together, that will bring me always hope because it's for me, from my perspective, it's the only way to go through all of these difficult times. And it's by being transparent and by building trust and by creating a new way of doing business altogether. So that's what brings me hope. And it also brings me hope when I see all of these new technologies coming to this side of the world.
And I loved when I started seeing that I could use AI at my farm and that I can be more efficient. And I loved how I see new generations of coffee producers or younger people that are studying at the university and bringing their science and their knowledge to this side of the world and to the farms. This always also brings me hope. It brings me hope when I see producers working together and talking to each other and creating these spaces to talk about what they have been doing and innovations in processing and innovations on how they are looking for their clients.
And I love having those conversations with all of these people around my cell. And I feel like that's a new way of doing business. And that's a new way of coffee producers growing. And at the end of this, it's creating a new atmosphere.
I don't know, but I feel like that lifts each others up here. So when I see that my neighbor is doing something different, that is doing his business better and he's telling me, hey, I'm doing this. I am selling my coffee this way. And I don't know, like all of this information that wasn't available before is creating a new generation of fruit producers that are having a voice that weren't heard before.
So I feel like that gives me a lot of hope. I have to say, I'm going to age myself here when I say what I'm about to say, but your generation gives me hope that you're not going to fuck things up the way my generation did. You guys are not going to put up with the same things that we put up with. I'm Gen X.
And we just believed what we were being told. And that's why my generation is going through such a difficult time right now. We're seeing all of those generational structures, right? Like the political structures and the authority structures.
We are seeing our lies, the lies that we were told melting away in front of us. And we're coming to realize we were so stupid for believing what people said. You guys are more skeptical than us. You guys are not as easily manipulated as us.
And that makes me hopeful. It makes me encouraged to see you guys as open as you are. And I think we're incredibly lucky to have someone like you in our industry that is willing to come on this podcast and speak honestly and speak as inspiring as you are directly to people who could benefit from your experience, as stressed as you are and as anxious as you are. I think you're a hero.
I think that you are somebody who has a massive future ahead. If you can get through this volatility, I think you are a leader of the future in our industry, Anna. And I'm honoured that you're a friend of the podcast. I'm honoured that you are willing to use your voice in this way.
And I'm just excited to see what you do long term. So thank you for doing what you do. Thank you so much, Lee. It's an honour to be here.
And I feel very grateful to be able to tell a little bit of our reality and to tell other people or other producers that we are not alone and that we're all going through difficult times. Sometimes you only see the media and social media where everything is beautiful, but the truth behind it and the numbers and everything, we're all going through that. So thank you for giving us a voice. The two inspirations of 2026 is Anna Doniz and Bad Bunny.
I love it. Will you tell everyone? We don't know how to get in contact with Bad Bunny, but we can tell you how to get in contact with Anna Doniz. Tell everyone how to get in contact with you, Anna.
Yeah, you can find me on Instagram at at Caffe Trinitivo or Anna Doniz. It's easy. And our website is www.cafetrinitivo.com. Yes, we will have links in the show notes.
And as always, our final question, Anna, when the future version of you comes back and watches this, hello, future version of Anna. But when she comes back and watches this, what do you hope for her? I hope she looks back and she sees somebody that made a little bit of a difference and that stood still and made the world understand that she was worth what she was saying and that she will have helped lift not only her community around, but people on calling and the rest of the industry kind of calling them to work together. So I hope that sometime in the future, I see an Anna that actually made it work and that could have made it through all of these difficult times.
We'll see. We'll see what will happen in the future. I am so excited about seeing that become a reality. And hopefully by that point, you and I have got our shit together and had a coffee or something together.
I hope so. We'll at least have to have lunch and dinner because if we're going to start at lunch, it will turn into dinner. So we should start earlier in the day and just talk for hours. It would be so great.
I hope we can make that happen in 2026 or 2027. It would be great. Will you wrap up our series for us, Anna, please? Guys, thank you for being here.
I always do this. But thank you for hearing all of these podcasts. And please love a peanut butter. Bye, everyone.
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