Here’s why you can expect to pay more for your morning brew

TORONTO — Coffee lovers can expect to pay more for their favourite cup of java as the price of popular Arabica beans soars to seven-year highs.

The price of coffee has been rising since the beginning of the year, but recent reports of frost in Brazil have sent future prices for Arabica beans even higher to about US$1.80 a pound.

Meanwhile, shoppers paid about $7.57 for a pound of roasted coffee and about $15.85 for a pound of instant coffee in July, according to Statistics Canada.

And rising coffee costs are expected to be passed along to consumers, Sylvain Charlebois, a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University, told CTV’s Your Morning on Tuesday.

“We are expecting prices to remain quite high for the rest of the year,” Charlebois said, speaking from Saint-Sauveur, about 75 kilometres northwest of Montreal.

About 90 per cent of Canadians drink coffee and the country ranked fifth in the world for per capita consumption in 2020, according to Charlebois.

While many people are happy to pick up a coffee at their favourite café, Charlebois said that during the pandemic more people have been making their own coffee at home.

“Brewing your own coffee at home is 25 to 30 times cheaper than having coffee at your favourite chain,” he said.

Regardless of where you get your coffee, the prices are expected to continue to climb in the foreseeable future.

The worst cold snap since 1994 in Brazil, the world’s top producer of coffee, has sent the price of raw green coffee beans to the highest level in almost seven years and that’s expected to have a domino effect, raising prices for roasted beans and ground coffee in grocery stores.

Arabica is the most popular type of coffee in the world and is the main type used by companies such as Starbucks and Nestle. Arabica prices on the ICE Futures U.S. exchange have doubled in price over the last 12 months with crops in Brazil already wilting after the worst dry spell in 91 years.

The extent of the damage is still being assessed but in areas where coffee trees have not survived it may take up to seven years for production to fully recover.

Shipping disruptions, caused partly by a surge in demand for consumer goods and a shortage of ships as people stayed home due to the global coronavirus pandemic, have also led to a sharp rise in the cost of transporting beans to major consuming countries in North America and Europe.