GIZ and partners host Workshop on Producers’ Perspectives at World of Coffee 2026

What do responsible purchasing practices look like from the perspective of coffee producers? At World of Coffee 2026 in Brussels, representatives from the coffee sectors from Brazil, Honduras, Liberia and Mozambique discussed how current purchasing practices affect their relationships with buyers. The exchange highlighted recurring challenges across several principles – and one clear conclusion: equal partnerships are the foundation for more responsible and sustainable buyer–producer relationships. 

The workshop focused on four principles drawn from the ETI Common Framework for Responsible Purchasing Practices in Food: Equal Partnership, Collaborative Production Planning, Fair Payment Terms and Sustainable Costing. In an interactive format, participants moved between four discussion tables, each guided by questions on how buyers currently perform against the respective principle and what works well or remains challenging in practice. The workshop concluded with a gallery walk vote on the most important principle and a joint plenary discussion on cross-cutting themes.

Across the four principles, participants described mixed experiences with buyers and identified recurring gaps in collaborative planning, payment terms and sustainable costing. While trust, communication and pre-financing were highlighted as enabling better cooperation, joint planning often remains limited, payment terms can be rigid and difficult to negotiate and the prices paid for coffee frequently do not reflect the true cost of production - leaving producers and suppliers to absorb the resulting risks. These discussions also pointed to broader structural challenges: Even when producers know their cost of production, market prices continue to dominate negotiations, limiting their ability to translate rising production costs into higher prices.

The strongest message of the workshop emerged around the principle of Equal Partnership. The reasoning was clear: Collaborative Production Planning, Fair Payment Terms and Sustainable Costing all depend on a relationship in which producers and buyers are able to communicate openly, build trust and negotiate on more equal terms. Participants’ experiences differed significantly: some described buyers who engage openly, show flexibility and take a genuine interest in the development of producer organizations and their communities. Others reported relationships in which collaboration remains largely formal, discussions focus primarily on quality and volume requirements, and producers carry a disproportionate share of costs and risks. 

For the German Retailers Working Group on Living Income and Living Wages, these producers’ perspectives provide an important reference point for its ongoing work on responsible purchasing practices. The workshop underlined that progress towards living incomes is not only a question of tools, prices or individual interventions. It also depends on the quality of the relationships behind them. Building trust and collaboration is needed to put responsible purchasing principles into practice.

The insights from the workshop will also feed into broader joint work on responsible purchasing practices in the coffee sector: Together with the Global Coffee Platform (GCP), IDH and Solidaridad, and with the support of Sustainable Food Lab (SFL), GIZ is working towards a shared vision for the development of a Coffee Sector Guidance on Responsible Procurement. The initiative aims to provide a common point of reference for actors across the coffee sector. Further details will be shared following the official launch at GCP10.