STiR coffee and tea magazine

24 STiR coffee and tea | 2025 Quarter 4 Winter (Dec/Jan/Feb) Labor shortage remains a major issue for Mexican coffee farmers as workers earn more money in the expanding tourism sector than they do picking coffee cherries. Photo credit: Eduardo Vite Specialty coffee shops and roasters can be found throughout Mexico, proudly serving locally grown coffee. Photo credit: Café Avellaneda A Local Renaissance Inside Mexico, a cultural shift is underway. Coffee consumption is "between 1.3kg and 1.7kg per person of coffee annually," and projected to reach "3.1 million 60kg bags" in the 2023/24 marketing year, with a significant consumption of soluble coffee according to the USDA report. It is also remarkable that city coffee shops have become omnipresent: "Today, if you don't have a café on your street, some- thing is missing," Espíndola says. Specialty coffee culture is transform- ing value perception. "For several years now, the price of specialty coffee in the domestic market has been higher than in export markets. That has encouraged many producers to sell at home." It's a quiet inversion of the usual commodity logic, suggesting a maturing internal market driven by pride and qual- ity. This, paired with proximity to one of the world's largest consumer markets, is giving Mexican coffee new leverage. This presents an opportunity to expand spe- cialty coffee consumption nationwide in a country renowned for its cuisine. The Transparency Gap Despite progress, structural weaknesses remain. Espíndola points out that "Un- like Colombia, where the Federation sets a daily reference price, Mexico has no institution that provides official pricing." Farm-gate prices still circulate via What- sApp groups and local intermediaries, leaving producers vulnerable. The ICO study describes Mexico's producer base as highly atomized, with limited cooperative organization and uneven access to formal marketing channels. This frag- mentation undermines traceability just as new EU regulations — EUDR and CSDDD — begin requiring farm-level verification. Continental Context Regional trade patterns reinforce this imbalance. According to the Inter-American In- stitute for Cooperation on Agriculture, coffee trade in Mesoamerica "remains oriented toward northern consumer markets such as the United States and Europe, while intra- regional trade in roasted or value-added coffee remains limited." According to the report, "Mexico has a relevant industrial capacity in the region, with decaffeination and soluble-coffee plants that could serve as a reference for strengthening coffee transformation in other producing countries" — a role that, if coordinated, could diversify income for Central American producers while strengthen- ing Mexico's own downstream industries. The US Connection and the Substitution Trend Across the border, American roasters are beginning to view Mexico not merely as an ethical origin but also as a practical one. In a recent industry roundtable organized by Algrano, several US roasters described how Mexican coffee fits their needs. "If I do try and replace Brazil, I'm probably looking at something from Mexico, or possibly Peru," Sam LaRobardiere, founder of Theory Coffee Roaster in California, explains. Patrick Riordan, co-owner of Lillies Coffee in Henrietta, Texas, adds that when they are "trying to substitute Brazil, we're looking to Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia. You can get something out of Oaxaca that's got that big chocolate flavor." For Espíndola, this shift confirms Mexico's latent potential; yet, she warns, "Coffee takes time to grow; I'm not sure we can meet this new demand immediately." An Incomplete Integration Mexico's government ratified the International Coffee Agreement 2022 on April 12, 2024, with a Decree in the Official Gazette. The goal of the agreement is to help stabi- lize coffee prices, improve the standard of living for producers, and promote sustain- able production across the value network. But implementation depends on coordina- tion between ministries, exporters, and NGOs, which is still a work in progress. Espíndola believes that the next frontier is coherence rather than expansion: "We need coordination between producers, institutions, and consumers to make coffee sus- tainable for everyone."

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