Many coffee growers and their employees are enduring a profound economic and humanitarian crisis. For most of the world’s 25 million coffee farmers, prices remain lower than production costs for the fourth successive season. Within the industry, views vary widely about the causes and solutions. Some believe that market forces should drive out uncompetitive players; others advocate intervention to correct the market’s volatility.

We asked people involved with the industry to recommend ways forward.¹ Our study found no single solution, but we did whittle down the promising strategies to a pair that would probably have the greatest impact: steering growers of higher-quality beans toward specialty coffees and helping troubled farmers diversify.² Both ideas are inspired by the fact that coffee is and will remain a commodity product whose price, despite cyclical recoveries, is going to fall steadily. Supply—driven by capricious weather, national policies, and production lags as growers attempt to deal with changing prices—has varied tremendously over time (Exhibit 1).

The current upheaval’s humanitarian cost may resemble that of past market crises, but its nature and origin are different. During the past ten years, the industry’s cost structure has shifted as a result of Brazil’s productivity-enhancing innovations...