What Companies Are Not Saying

The coffee industry is awash in sustainability claims. What’s missing, the 2026 Coffee Barometer finds, is proof that any of it is changing the commercial terms that dictate value in the global coffee trade. 

Part 1 of our two-part series on the launch of the 2026 Barometer looked at how two decades of corporate sustainability promises in coffee have done little to move the needle on broad structural change. This second part looks at what companies are not saying.

“We often assume the debate is about refining metrics,” 2026 Coffee Barometer co-author Sjoerd Panhuysen recently told DCN. “In reality, it starts much earlier, with the absence of even the most basic disclosures.”

After assessing 15 of the world’s largest coffee roasters and traders, the Barometer found that not one disclosed pricing structures, contract durations, risk-sharing arrangements or premiums paid above the commodity price. “Opacity, the evidence shows, is a choice,” the report states.

The 2026 Coffee Barometer was authored by Panhuysen and Frederik de Vries of Ethos Agriculture, with additional contributions from Antonie Fountain and Ashlee Tuttleman of Vocal, Niels Haak of Conservation International and Andrea Olivar of Solidaridad. The report says responsibility for the content and views rests solely with the authors, while also noting financial support from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Where the Money Goes

One of the report’s clearest examples comes from value distribution in the German retail coffee market. Citing research from Le Basic, the Barometer says for a kilogram of coffee retailing at €9.71, farmers received €2.05 gross, with net income falling to €0.41 after production costs. Meanwhile, unpaid family labor can add up to roughly 10% of the retail price. In other words, the family farm is not merely underpaid. It is subsidizing the rest of the chain.

The imbalance grows more glaring across different formats. In the German market example, ground coffee retailing at €8.06 per kilogram returned about 24% of the retail price to farmers. When equivalent coffee was sold as capsules at €35.98 per kilogram, farmers received just 6% of the retail value. The extra value — created by format, branding and convenience — largely stayed with downstream actors.

The report also challenges one of specialty coffee’s longstanding assumptions — that differentiation automatically means a better deal for farmers. Drawing on the Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide and related analysis, the Barometer finds that some specialty segments return a smaller share of retail value to producing countries than undifferentiated commodity markets do, despite demanding more labor, quality control and processing investment.

Panhuysen said that lesson applies directly to smaller roasters and independent traders that may assume higher-quality or differentiated coffee automatically means more equitable sourcing.

“If sourcing is justified on quality or differentiation, the real question is whether that premium reaches farmers in relation to their additional costs, not just whether it exists relative to a commodity benchmark,” he told DCN. 

Blurrier Middle Ground

The companies that control the flow of green coffee are growing bigger, and harder to see, according to the report. The Barometer said that the top five traders’ share of global green coffee trade rose from roughly 30% in 2018 to an estimated 50% by 2025, driven largely by consolidation.

Panhuysen said traders face far less scrutiny than well-known roasting brands, despite playing a central role in translating roasters’ and retailers’ requirements into sourcing practices.

“They are the linking pin between origin and destination,” Panhuysen said. “Yet they operate largely out of public view, many of the largest trading houses are family-owned or privately held, not listed on any stock exchange, and therefore not subject to the disclosure requirements that come with public listing.”

Greenhushing and Private Schemes

The report’s transparency critique extends to certification and verification, too. The Barometer says coffee companies are increasingly substituting independent third-party certification — such as Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance — with proprietary, second-party systems that they define and control themselves.

The Barometer says this shift has eroded independent volume records and left companies as the primary gatekeepers of what gets reported, how it’s aggregated and which standards apply.

“As long as commercial terms of trade remain a black box, progress can’t be verified and underperformance can’t be challenged,” Panhuysen said.

For smaller buyers or other parties trying to distinguish meaningful sustainability investment from greenwashing or reputational positioning, this kind of private record-keeping only further obscures the global picture. 

“Who defines and controls the data?” Panhuysen said. “Independent certification with audited volumes, or proprietary systems where companies set their own indicators and reporting boundaries? The quiet shift towards the latter is one of the most consequential changes in the sector.”

A New Regulatory Phase

The Barometer describes a sector entering a new regulatory phase, with rules in the EU such as the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).

“The sector has treated systemic failures as technical problems, addressing symptoms at farm level rather than confronting the underlying commercial conditions,” the report states. “Regulation is now imposing from outside what the sector has been unwilling to accept from within.”

Yet the report warns that compliance alone will not improve farmer livelihoods if buyers simply push costs upstream.

“CSRD and CSDDD effectively pull data requirements upstream through commercial relationships,” Panhuysen said. “That means even mid-sized roasters will increasingly be asked by their buyers (retailers) to provide traceability and due diligence information.”

Regardless of their regulatory environment, Panhuysen suggested smaller roasters are generally better suited to break with the opacity of the larger market by paying above commodity price, structuring long-term contracts or being transparent to their customers about how pricing works, “precisely because they are less constrained by large volumes or shareholder return pressures.”

While offering “no easy optimism,” the 2026 Barometer concludes that the larger actors driving the coffee sector face a choice: “Keep managing the appearance of progress, or undertake the structural change a resilient coffee future demands.”

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