Bad Beans

First it was the eggs:

Last month, "Arabica coffee prices hit an eye-watering new high on the Intercontinental Exchange at $3.48 a pound," Food and Wine reported. "This means the price is up more than 40% over the last three months and 79% year-over-year — and it's set to trickle down to the consumer level soon." This month, things are worse. "The world benchmark for the global price of Arabica coffee has more than doubled what it was a year ago, as of Friday," KIRO 7 News reported Monday. The biggest culprit is drought, which hit coffee producers Brazil and Vietnam particularly hard. "Brazil, which exports the lion's share of the industry's preferred arabica beans, was beginning its growing season as the country's worst drought on record stretched into a second year," Meg Duff wrote today for Business Insider. "Two decades ago, US Department of Agriculture economists looked at how commodity coffee price swings affected grocery shelves," Duff continued. "They found that every $0.10 increase in futures led to an immediate $0.02 increase in prices for canisters of ground coffee. When commodity prices stayed high, the rest of the increase was passed on over the course of a year."

Breakfast is getting more expensive by the minute...