In 2025, the cocoa industry was hit with one of the worst crises in several decades where prices hit record highs of over US$10,950 /MT, caused by a culmination of factors such as severe crop failure, climate change and plant disease.
Even though prices corrected back to below US$4,000/MT early this year, the industry is already digging its heels in to prepare for another production deficit in the upcoming season, largely due to incoming El Niño weather.
Together, this is causing one of the most severe instabilities the global cocoa industry has faced in a long time, and because weather and climate have been the most widely-attributed reasons for this, it also means that various other crops are also susceptible to similar challenges — with coffee having been widely named as one as it grows in a similar tropical environment as cocoa, with the same rainfall and temperature reliance.
As such, coffee companies worldwide are also working to improve resilience and reduce risk to production yields, in hopes of avoiding the same fate as cocoa has. One of these is Nestle, owner of major global coffee brands like Nescafe and Nespresso.
“Nestle’s main strategy to ensure coffee sustainability [and supply stability] is the Nescafe Plan 2030, which is all about making coffee farming future-proof,” Nestle Chief Communications and Sustainability Officer Antonia Wanner said.
“Even though we are seeing more and more extreme weather patterns such as longer droughts and stark rains which makes things very stressful for the plants and of course for the farmers, we have seen that through agricultural methods like regenerative agriculture, the farms are actually more resilient.”
The plan is an undoubtedly ambitious one, tying in with wider business goals to make the business fully net zero by 2050 and have regenerative agricultural practices applied for 50% of its sourced ingredients. And amid all of these, coffee is taking an undeniable front seat.
“The coffee plan is already ahead of the game because we’re already at 53% regenerative agriculture practices,” Nestle Head of Sustainability for Coffee Antje Shaw added.
“So it is clear that coffee is a key ingredient for Nestle in this regard — we have coffee, we have dairy, we have cocoa, but coffee is a really big one, and makes up quite a substantial part of our business, and our insights come from contact with thousands of farmers across every origin region because we’ve been in the coffee business for so many years.”
What specific strategy is Nestle implementing for coffee resilience?
With so much at stake, a large part of Nestle’s investment into improving coffee production has been focused on the coffee plants themselves, highlighting a focus on ‘farm renovation’ to ensure sustainable yields.
“There are several ways farmers can renovate their coffee trees: i) Replacing old coffee trees with new ones; ii) Adding new coffee trees to increase tree density; or iii) Working with existing coffee trees and rejuvenate their productive tissue through grafting, pruning or stumping,” Shaw said.
“Young coffee trees take up to three years to produce a significant amount of coffee cherries. Therefore, renovating coffee farms requires careful planning to avoid an abrupt yield loss and reduced income for farmers.”
The concept of farm renovation lies in the knowledge that older coffee trees tend to naturally become less productive and more susceptible to the effects of climate change, which further reduces yield.
This therefore calls for a ‘renovation’ of the farm, planting new coffee trees early enough so that coffee production yields remain stable, farmer incomes are not affected, and the prices of end-products like Nescafe don’t face any sharp hikes.
It is also important to note that the various coffee producing markets worldwide from Brazil to Vietnam to Ethiopia all have different environments and there is no one-size-fits-all coffee variant that can magically grow in every market, meaning that renovation also needs to be conducted on a situational basis.
“The Nescafé Plan carefully selects the best available variety for each region, with the aim to maximise the benefits to the farmers and improve the resilience of their production,” Shaw added.
“Over 20 million plantlets are distributed per year, and to date we have given out around 335 million coffee plantlets since 2010 in more than 10 countries.”
Keeping coffee trendy
Beyond regenerative agriculture and farm renovation, a look from the other side of the supply chain shows that competition within the sector is intensifying, and every coffee brand needs to keep up with current trends and consumer demands to ensure that coffee’s role in consumer’s everyday diets habits is not shaken.
A very clear example here is closely related to — once again — the weather: Climate change is causing temperatures to rise in almost every market globally, which in turn places enormous stress on coffee as a regular beverage choice if the focus remains on its traditional hot-drink format.
“One of the biggest changes I see in coffee today is the shift to cold coffee — many younger consumers today are tending to drink more cold coffee than hot coffee, and mixing it with all kinds of different things as well,” Wanner said.
“This is where innovations like our ready-to-use coffee concentrates have come in, not only because it can be served cold but also because it adds a lot of convenience to at-home drinking: Just ice in a cup and pour in the coffee, and it is ready in three seconds. So it’s innovations like these where we really see huge potential.”
Join us for Climate Smart Food 2026
Wanner and Shaw will be sharing more of their insights on Day 1 of the Climate Smart Food 2026 Summit – register for free here to find out more, and watch live or on-demand.
