Brazil drought punishes coffee farms and threatens to push prices even higher

By Gabriela Sá Pessoa and Dee-Ann Durbin

Silvio Almeida’s coffee plantation sits at an ideal altitude on a Brazilian hillside, whose clay-rich soil does well at retaining moisture from rainfall and a nearby reservoir.

Lately, though, water is scarce on Almeida’s modest farm in Caconde, a town in one of Sao Paulo state’s key growing regions. He can’t get his coffee to grow the way it should.

In Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producer, Almeida and other farmers have started grappling with the nation’s worst drought in more than seven decades and above-average temperatures. Almeida expected to harvest 120 sacks of coffee beans this harvest season, but instead managed just 100.

“Given the conditions here, the 2025 crop is already affected,” he told The Associated Press, pointing to a part of his plantation where flower buds died before blooming. “I won’t say it’s doomed, because with God anything is possible. But based on the situation,