Coffee producers from Brazil, Nicaragua, Honduras, Uganda, Indonesia, Guatemala, Mexico and Sri Lanka have called on downstream buyers to move beyond isolated sustainability projects and adopt a commitment to responsible procurement.
The VOCAL Coffee Alliance held consultations with coffee producers during June and December 2025, which highlighted a gap between sustainability commitments and day-to-day procurement practices.
While recent commodity price increases have raised farm gate prices for some producers, structural barriers, such as delayed payments and rising input and compliance, are preventing many smallholders from closing the living income gap.
Procurement practices
Producers are calling on buyers to translate their sustainability commitments into procurement practices that ‘deliver remunerative prices, faster payments, co-financing for compliance and shared risk mechanisms’, the alliance noted.
Typically, downstream actors capture the majority of value from coffee production, while smallholders, who produce around 80% of global coffee, receive a small share, despite the labour and stewardship involved. In addition, long cash cycles are forcing some producers into seeking expensive credit, or side selling, with producers reporting no consistent examples of buyers offering pre-finance, shortened payment terms, or working capital support.
Compliance costs
Compliance costs are similarly ‘burdensome’, the alliance noted, with producers facing high upfront and ongoing costs to meet regulations such as the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), in many cases without buyer co-financing.
Rather than one-off sustainability projects, producers are seeking long-term relationships built on transparency and regular engagement, as well as pricing structures that reflect production realities.
VOCAL Coffee Alliance said that it is inviting producers, producer groups, civil society organisations, buyers and funders to ‘collaborate on expanding consultations, aggregating income and price data, and sharing practical procurement clauses and risk-sharing models. VOCAL seeks partners to share or co-develop examples of contract language, payment terms, and data-dividend pilots that can be scaled across origins.’ Read more here.
