Osiria Research · Coffee & Commodities Note · June 2026
Coffee is a useful microcosm of how value is split between the Global South that grows commodities and the Global North that processes and brands them. The chain runs producer → exporter → importer/trader → roaster → retailer/cafe → consumer, and the share each link keeps is strikingly uneven. The farmer who grows the bean typically captures a single-digit to roughly 10% slice of the final retail price; the great majority accrues downstream — and largely offshore from where the coffee was grown.
The split
On SCA benchmark figures (via Visual Capitalist) for a $14.99 pound of roasted specialty coffee, the green coffee bought at origin (FOB) is about $3.24, or 22% of the retail price; shipping and import add ~2%, roasting ~12%, roaster overhead and profit ~27%, and retail margin and costs ~37%. Critically, the farm-gate commodity value of the green — about $1.09 — is just ~7% of the bag. The farmer-share gap is the core equity issue that direct-trade and specialty sourcing models try to close.
| Stage | Where it sits | Share of retail $* |
|---|---|---|
| Green coffee (origin to FOB) | Producing nations (South) | ~22% ($3.24) |
| Shipping & import | Cross-border | ~2% ($0.31) |
| Roasting (labor, cert, loss) | Consuming nations (North) | ~12% ($1.86) |
| Roaster overhead & profit | Consuming nations (North) | ~27% ($3.99) |
| Retail margin & costs | Consuming nations (North) | ~37% ($5.59) |
Where the value accrues — and why it stays North
The downstream links are concentrated in developed economies for structural reasons, not accident. Roasting and branding require capital, consistent energy and logistics, and proximity to the consumer; retail and cafe margin depend on real estate and brand equity built in rich-world markets. The premium tiers are large and growing — the branded coffee-shop market runs about $54B (2024) toward $72B (2028), and global specialty is around $111.5B (2025) — but that value is captured where the roasting, branding, and pouring happen, overwhelmingly in the North.
Producing nations export a commodity; consuming nations sell an experience. The margin lives in the gap between the two, and that gap is geographic.
This is the classic value-added trap: the part of the chain that is hardest to differentiate — growing an agricultural commodity — is the part producing nations occupy, while the differentiable, brandable, high-margin activities sit behind the capital, infrastructure, and consumer access of developed markets. Even a record green-price year, like 2024–2025, lifts the farmer’s slice only modestly because the retail price is dominated by costs and margins that have nothing to do with the bean.
Levers that shift value upstream
- Floor pricing — the Fairtrade minimums ($1.40/lb washed arabica, $1.05/lb robusta) plus a $0.20/lb premium (and an extra $0.30/lb if organic) put a contractual floor under farm income when the C-market falls.
- Premiums over the C-market — specialty coffees often trade on a fixed FOB or a premium over rather than at the benchmark, moving more value to origin for verified quality.
- Traceability as leverage — under EUDR, origins with strong geolocation data gain bargaining power, partially rewarding producers for documentation rather than only volume.
- Origin branding — when producing regions capture downstream activities (origin-roasted, country-of-origin brands), they move up the value curve rather than staying raw-commodity suppliers.
Osiria implications
Coffee shows in one cup why value-added stays in the North: the structure rewards capital, brand, and consumer proximity over raw production. For Osiria — operating across importing, roasting, and brand — the strategic posture is to source on premiums-over-C and verified quality rather than the bare benchmark, to treat traceability as a value lever rather than a compliance cost, and to recognize that the margin it earns downstream is precisely the margin producing nations are structurally locked out of.