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. As a member of our roasted coffee tier on our Patreon, you're not just supporting the podcast. You're stepping into a space where you can join exclusive live video sessions and meet like-minded people from every corner of the coffee world.
The quality of the discussions is on par with what we get on the podcast, except it's an open discussion with about 35 other like-minded people. For just $20 a month, our roasted coffee tier gets you early ad-free podcast access, our weekly industry insights blog, and access to join us for the live monthly discussion groups. If the roasted coffee tier isn't quite the right fit for you or it's a little out of your budget, we have other options so that you can still be a part of the community and support the work that we do. Head over to patreon.com forward slash Mapper Forward 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 Mapper Forward friends. I'm your host Lee Sephar. And this is unfortunately the final episode of what has been a fantastic series with Brazilian coffee agronomists, agronomists, Jonas Lemie Férico.
We are talking about the 2026 Brazilian coffee harvests. And in this episode, we're gonna talk about the Brazilian exports, tariffs and domestic market behaviour on high prices. I apologise for my speech guys, it's the middle of the night here in Australia, so I apologise for slipping up a little bit. But this is one of those episodes where we're talking about, we're connecting a lot of the dots.
A lot of things are becoming, you know, we talked about the high prices with regards coming into the coffee crisis. We've been talking for the last couple of years about this coffee crisis. And now we have a crisis on top of a crisis. And I would even say that in between the coffee crisis and the crisis with regards to the war zoneers, we have a Trump crisis.
So they kind of made it, there was one and a half crisis and now there's 15,000 crisis things to it makes the trouble. And this year there's an election in Brazil that in the middle of this war, and given Brazil is such an important agricultural piece of the puzzle to feed the world, it's a really important part of all of that. So how are you seeing all of these pieces fitting together? And what role, what they did to drive the prices higher in let's say 2025?
This year, this season was a very complicated season for climate reasons as we talk. The season was not as good as we are expecting for the 2020 season when it's about that. Then we have tariffs that impact in some ways the exploitation of coffee to the United States, mostly if we take the data from the exploitation for United States which was, and it still is a very important player in the coffee scenario and for Brazil, we saw a lot of movements on the market to deal with this tariffs in Brazil was 50% tariffs because all this issue that Trump had with the current president of Brazil and the last president of Brazil was Sonaro. But along that that buffs this, we have a solution in Brazil deal with that and we have find a way to put the tariffs off for coffee and for many other products.
We don't know now that we have this 15% tariffs that Trump wants to implement, how are we gonna do with that? And most of people don't know, even when we have like 50% of tariffs, I ask for exporters, okay, we are paying that, we are not, people are on the United States are paying and what they are very confused to how it was gonna work. So I don't know if this is 50% and not a lot of people are talking about that in Brazil, I don't know why. Now with this new 15% word, why Gareth?
Maybe because of the war. I think there's so much going on, that people are so confused. I put this video out on Instagram saying like, why isn't the coffee industry freaking out about this war? It was very interesting what people said.
They said two things majorly, well three things. Some people said yes, we are freaking out, but the people who aren't freaking out, they said, I'm tired, I don't have anything else to pay, I can't pay attention to anything else. And then other people turned around and said, well, there's no way this is gonna affect coffee. I'm like, what are you talking about?
This is absolutely coming. This is the thing that is gonna affect coffee in such a major way. And for those who were saying like, look, I'm tired, I'm fatigued, I can't pay attention to anything else. My thing is like, guys, take the time to like rest, but this is not the thing to not pay attention to.
This thing is gonna change the coffee industry globally. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, it's, for me, we are living in my opinion, that I call the call of theory, that when we are in the chaos, everything looks normal. There's so many stuff happens now that we start to think this mass has something normal.
It's the new reality, right? Yeah, how the things are like, for coffee, it's crazy to think like, since 2021 until now and probably for 2026 Brazil will never harvest a season bigger than six years ago. Yeah. It's something that, this is crazy for Brazilian standards, just take the graphics for the last like, maybe 100 years.
And you see always, we are talking only when we have like something like a big frost in the 1970s. But since he there, always we are growing production every year, we have on and off year as normal. But since there, we do not do that. Oh, other thing, it's, when we take his expectation data from the official data from Seikafehr, we saw in the last 12 months, we exported, it's about 10 million bags less than the 12 months before in cooperation of the last season.
It's like 10 million bags less than the last period of 12 months. This is a lot of coffee. Why this happens? There's no stock enough.
Trump is acting. We have some problems with hardware issues. Like I said, they're affecting this part of exploitation. Farmers are not producing a lot of coffee if I was a player in the market.
I need to understand what happens. Because one thing that for now, at least we know, the consumer size of coffee, it's stabilizing. So people are not sort of drinking coffee. The world's in company, it's okay, sometimes growing a little bit.
But in the production side, we have these issues, which is directly related. And the issues that are not directed like war, Trump's tariff or logistics for exploitation. So in some way, it's hard to believe that this will not affect the coffee chain. It's like I say, it's too much naive to think in some way, this is not affecting the coffee chain.
And I know the C-market, walking it, have their own path of understanding what's happening. Has it aligned? Yeah, they have a different way to do with that because we know there's a lot of speculation in the market. They have always a positive view in coffee.
This happens since 2021. When we have the frost, they said the coffee will not be affected. When we have the drops, they said the coffee will be not be affected. But in some point, the reality came to them.
That's why we have coffee close to 300 cents a pound because it's hard to be too positive when we do not have results that... To back it up. Yeah, to back it up, everything from then. So the problem is, as coffee, the way that the coffee chain works, we could use, like I said, stocks for almost a year.
So the market takes time to see this dropping or expectation on everything. And that's why it's hard to see some spikies, something, in my opinion, in the C-market, because they know they have a big coffee in stocks for some time. But I know, like I said, in other episodes, Brazil do not have a lot of big coffee in stocks here to attend an expectation for the countries. And probably it's one of the reasons that we exported about 10 million bags less than the last season, because along the years since the last five years, we are using these stocks and we cannot spare some coffee for the next year that we usually spare.
So we export the coffee as much as the contracts say we need to export. So this season will be a very important season, in my opinion, for the future of the coffee, as the last season was too, when we have this huge spikies, because when we see 2025 season, we will be not as better as the market are expecting. We saw these spikies on prices. And now we need to see the harvest, how it's gonna be.
And the market, in some point, they will realize there's no backup to say, there's a lot of coffee available. Brazil will export as much as it will as before, because this is not the reality from the coffee fields. Do you think, I think a lot about succession. I think about what the next generation of coffee farmers is going, who are they gonna be?
Where are they gonna come from? Are they gonna happen? Because our instability, as you mentioned, instability is not good for business. Investors are not looking for instability.
And all I see in 2024, 2025, now 2026, the years that came before that, the 10 years that came before it, they were unstable, but they were not crazy, unstable, like 2024, 2025, 2026. What incentive do you think there is for the next generation of coffee farmers to want to get into this trade? Is that a concern in Brazil? Is that a discussion in Brazil?
Yes, I saw some kind of light when we have this verticalization idea in farmers, like farmers, start to grow a dry process and roast coffee. This grow a lot in Brazil since the last 10 years, was not a reality. Now I saw more farmers working on that, but this is not enough to sell all the coffee do they have by verticalizing production and sell coffee and roast it back directly to customers, because farmers do not have the infrastructure of logistics to do a coffee farm. Even a small one, do a lot of coffee.
They need to do that to pay the bills when they sell green coffee. So when I saw this movement, I saw more young people interested in the process. This verticalization is more interesting to do for them, because they could do websites, get into the trade customers, do different types of coffee, go to events and brew coffee. Great content.
Yeah, everything, yeah. So this is bring more flow for the farmers. We usually are isolated land that they grow stuff, people go there and buy it, nobody care it. Now we have like Instagram's page and influencers on the coffee chain, talking about coffee.
And this brings more young people to the fields, but it's not enough to all place everything, because even with everything bounds with this technology and social media, we still need a hard work on food to grow coffee. And this is the issue. Most of because labor shortage that we have here, we are passing in Nigeria, in my opinion, worldwide, with label, label not labor, will be, it will be needed to treat it in a different way, because people are not willing to make just a few dollars by hour, go to fall, sleep and go to work again. And as used to be 40 years ago, it's about to be prospering the work and survive with your family and the traditional motto of society that we have.
But the young generation, even me, which is not so younger, it's not for us. I'm older than you. Yeah, more interested in this very traditional work to survive. They need to have some joy in their lives.
So sometimes they, okay, why I need to work as a crazy man to just pay my bills and survive, they have no money. So this is the path I want, and people say, but they need to do something, and maybe they do less and make less money to have some joy. Exactly. And not so much stress.
And government, we need to think in that way, because at some point, they will need to have some support to bring this labor that needs hand labor back to the, to everywhere, not just agriculture, but agriculture is a point that is, they work in a very harsh conditions because everyone know how working fields are. And we need to find a way to survive, prosper, and work that need to be done by hand, be valued in some way, not only in terms of money, but in terms of quality of the work that these people are gonna do it. And farmers and agricultural labor is facing this problem right now. Worldwide.
And even if you have money, sometimes you don't find people to are willing to work in field in this condition, even if the farmer give all the conditions that they could give like proper information of work, housing, proper food safety, and everything that they need. But it's still a harsh work that the young generation and it's not willing to do. Yeah. And Brazil has to solve this problem because the global, its economy depends on the exploitation of a food.
John, as this has been a fantastic series. Thank you again. I suspect that you're gonna be coming on again in 2026. This is a wild year.
This is just fucking crazy. It's not even the end of March and it is just nuts. So I'm already gonna just say to you, we'll probably have you won again this year. So brace yourself.
Thank you for a really wonderful series. Can you remind everyone where they can find out more about you and if they are in Brazil, how they can get in contact with you and hire you as a consultant? I'm on Instagram that I usually share my days on the coffee fields. It's awesome.
Jonah's coffee agronomist, you can find me there or on LinkedIn when I share more of my articles, my ideas when we are interested in reading more stuff about coffee with Jonah's, maybe Ferris or Jonah's Ferris. Both you can find me. And I'm always glad to talk with people worldwide about coffee and bring this perspective that I have from Brazil fields and my experience. I always said that not means I am the answer for that, but as a part of your chain, you should have to talk with many people as you know, but you have your own perspective of coffee chain, coffee growing as important to diversify, as I always said to the people that I talk on my social media.
You're a real asset to our industry. You're very generous with your information. You're always trying to inform people. We will have links in the show notes.
I read everything that you put out. So I'm grateful for how much you teach me. And I'm just so grateful that we've got someone in the industry. And we've got more than just you, but I'm very glad that you are one of the people who really helps people unpack what's really going on the ground so that they can make up their own minds.
So thank you again, Jonas. Our final question that we ask every guest. And the last time you were on last year, we asked this question, but we didn't have a war. So I suspect this could be a little different.
When the future version of you comes back and listens to this, what do you hope for him? I think every year when I get older, some stuff that I thought was important starts to be not. And sometimes if you said that people do not realize that along the life and even very powerful people with most eight years of age things, some stuff are important that are not. And I know I always think about joy in life.
It's very important. I do not, I try to do my best with people that I met along my path. And I like to be my future one to still do that, because what's really worth in this life is the people that are around us, the rest is just part of the play that we do the war. The simulation.
Yeah. But the people I think is the very important part of our life. In some point, our life or the perception of life for some people do not realize that, that everything doesn't matter if you don't have people. And I still believe, even with all this crap happened worldwide, most of the people in the world are good.
And this is important. So people always say to me, oh, humankind and humans are not good, they do a lot of things for their own. But they are in my thoughts, they are good, but sometimes they do not understand what, well, what they're doing. And I believe in the- You're very kind and generous of people.
For me, it's how I get up on the bed every day and say, I will find a good person in my day. And I find a way to deal with the issues on these interpretations that they have. I saw a lot of the people around me, they have some thoughts and along the years, they change their thoughts because they realize what they are. That means they are not bad, they just do not understand what they roll or what they shoot, how they play this game of life.
So that is why I desire for my future self, do not lost hope in humankind, on everything that make my life a good and still join every day. That's a beautiful answer. I think that's one of my favorite answers yet. I think we're all looking for a little bit of hope somewhere because it's just, it feels a little heavy right now.
Yeah, it's not easy. I can't go home, you know what I mean? I'm very grateful, very grateful to be in Australia. I'm very grateful to be spending extra time with my family.
And I've got nothing to complain about. So hopefully join us. My future self and your future self finally get to have a coffee somewhere. Yeah.
That would be great. Maybe in Brazil. Yeah. Because it won't begin to buy.
Will you do me the honour of signing off our series for us? Yeah. Nice love and peanut butter. Nice love and peanut butter.
Have an amazing rest of your day, everyone. Thank you again, joiners. Bye, guys. Bye, bye.
If you enjoyed this episode, consider supporting Mapper Forward, our guests and advertisers on social media. Subscribe, hit the like button, and leave a comment and share this episode with a friend. And if you'd like to support our work more directly, become a paid premium YouTube subscriber or Patreon back out to get early access to the show, add free directly to your inbox each week. You can find links in the show notes.