Costa Rica coffee output rises, but growers face shrinking margins
Costa Rica’s crop is set to rise 3.5% to 1.2 million bags, but a stronger colón and weaker coffee prices are still crushing farm margins.
Costa Rica is heading into a bigger coffee year, but the extra bags are not fixing the business at farm level. The latest USDA Foreign Agricultural Service outlook projects green coffee production rising 3.5% to 1.2 million 60-kilogram bags in market year 2026/27, with exports up 3.9% to 1.06 million bags and domestic consumption holding flat at 320,000 bags.
That is a respectable supply story on paper. On the ground, it is a margin story, and not a good one. The colón has appreciated about 35% since mid-2022, which has cut into local-currency returns even when dollar prices look workable. ICAFE says growers have seen revenues fall by nearly 30% since market year 2021/22, a brutal squeeze in a country where arabica dominates and quality premiums are supposed to do the heavy lifting.
Coffee prices have not helped. The report cites a drop from $574 per 60-kilogram bag in October 2025 to $378 in April 2026, a slide that hit just as production costs stayed high. Labor remains expensive, inputs are still costly, and for many farms the arithmetic is simple: a better harvest does not matter much if each bag brings in less real income than it did a year or two ago.
The structural strain is showing up in the farm base itself. Planted area is forecast at around 83,000 hectares, with harvested area at 79,000 hectares. The number of growers fell to 24,653 in 2024/25 from 25,549 a year earlier, and it is far below the level seen a decade ago. In a business built on small lots, careful picking, and traceable lots, every lost producer matters.
Weather is another headwind. El Niño could reduce rainfall later in 2026, adding more uncertainty to a crop already dealing with currency pressure and softening prices. For a coffee origin that leans so hard on quality and specialty identity, that is the uncomfortable contradiction: Costa Rica can produce more coffee and still leave growers short, while buyers downstream get no guarantee that a larger crop will bring calmer prices or a healthier supply chain.
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