The End of Cheap Coffee: Why the Diner Staple Is About to Become a Luxury - Lifestyle - GOOD: Watts calls the prices during that period “unsustainably low.” Farmers barely made enough money to survive, let alone invest in the long-term viability of their farms. Some growers even shifted focus: to pineapples in Costa Rica, soy in Brazil, and livestock in Colombia (as well as drug crops like coca and poppy).
With coffee supplies running short, prices escalated at a rapid clip, outpacing even gasoline’s monumental ascent. Between spring 2010 and spring 2011, coffee roughly doubled in price. On the futures exchange in New York City, the price per pound crossed a frightening milestone—the $3 mark—hitting a three-decade high on May 3, 2011.