31/08/2026
What the farmgate?
We provide farmgate prices to our clients only on demand, always together with the context needed to understand what that number actually represents. Why?
Coffee delivery at origin is a critical step. And it can look completely different from one origin to another.
In the Mayombe rainforest in DR Congo, coffee cherries are picked up in the forest before being taken to the fermentation and drying facility.
At other origins, farmers deliver their cherries themselves to centralized processing facilities. This is common in Vietnam or El Salvador, for example.
In Peru, farmers usually process their coffee to parchment. This facilitates transport through challenging terrain and gives them more control over critical quality steps before the coffee reaches the buying point.
In Indonesia, the picture gets even more diverse, with farmers selling coffee at different stages, from cherry to wet or dried parchment, depending on the region and processing method.
And there are yet other models. In Espírito Santo, Brazil, or at better situated farms in El Salvador and Panama, producers may control the entire process from harvest to exportable green coffee. In some cases, they are also the exporters themselves.
There is no single model.
These differences reflect very different geographic, cultural and economic realities. They also mean that the product changing hands can be fundamentally different. Fresh cherries are not parchment coffee. Parchment is not exportable green coffee. And each includes a different amount of work, cost and risk.
Recognizing this heterogeneity is important when we talk about coffee prices and transparency.
Because flattening all of these realities into one comparable “farmgate price” simply cannot work without some mathematical acrobatics.
And the more we flatten and calculate, the less this number actually helps us create transparency.
