Sustainable Coffee Purchases Slip as One Major Buyer Shifts Its Approach

The share of green coffee bought against a recognized sustainability baseline just fell for the first time in several years, and one large buyer accounts for much of the drop. The Global Coffee Platform's latest purchasing report puts the 2025 figure at 69.3% across 14 roasters and retailers, down from a record 75.36% the year before. The headline dip looks modest. The story underneath it is sharper.

One buyer's shift drives the decline

GCP attributes the fall to what it calls "a shift in sourcing practices by one major company." The company-level numbers make that clear. JDE Peet's purchases meeting GCP-recognized standards dropped from 72.94% in 2024 to 47.04% in 2025. The company says it has moved away from certification- and verification-based sourcing toward a risk-based approach built on human rights and environmental due diligence (HREDD). Under that framework, it reports that 88.8% of its 2025 green coffee was responsibly sourced.

Different yardstick, very different numbers. That's the core tension here. A buyer can look like it's backsliding on one metric while claiming progress on another, and the industry doesn't yet have a shared way to reconcile the two.

Volumes fall while verification slides

Roughly 1.58 million metric tons moved through GCP-recognized programs in 2025, down 8.9% from 1.74 million metric tons in 2024. Total reported purchases, including conventional coffee, dipped less than 1% to about 2.29 million metric tons.

Most of the loss came from what the report calls "2nd Party Assurance Systems," which covers in-house verification programs run by roasters and traders, along with tailored schemes such as those from Enveritas. Volumes in that category fell 26%. Third-party certifications, including 4C, Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance, held relatively steady.

GCP framed the findings carefully in its announcement. "These findings underline both the value and the limits of current collective reporting," the organization said. "Sustainable coffee purchases remain the sector's most widely aligned indicator, providing a common reference point for tracking sourcing commitments. At the same time, purchase volumes alone cannot show whether sustainability efforts are improving outcomes for farmers, strengthening supply chain resilience, or supporting the transition to more sustainable and regenerative coffee production."

More participants, fewer origins

Participation grew even as the picture narrowed. Lidl, NewCoffee and Ringtons joined the reporting initiative in 2025, bringing the total to 14 roasters and retailers. The number of eligible sustainability programs rose from 26 to 30.

Yet sustainable coffee came from 30 producing origins, down from 34 a year earlier. Brazil and Vietnam alone accounted for about 61% of the reported sustainable volume. GCP also noted that year-to-year comparisons are complicated by changes in participating companies and eligible programs, so the trend line deserves some caution.

The series has run nearly every year since 2018. The 2024 report reached a record 75.36%, following 73% in 2023 and 70% in 2022. This is the first real reversal in that run.

Procurement is where the problem sits

The purchasing data sits inside a much larger problem. The 2026 Coffee Barometer found that the average coffee-farming household in eight of the world's 10 largest producing countries falls short of living-income benchmarks. Two decades of corporate sustainability commitments haven't closed that gap, and poverty and economic insecurity remain widespread among coffee farmers and farmworkers.

That's why attention is moving from certification counts toward how buyers actually purchase. In March, GCP joined IDH and Solidaridad in publishing shared procurement principles developed with 14 major traders and roasters. The principles stress longer-term relationships, consideration of production costs and a fairer sharing of risk. In September, that work expanded through a collaboration with German development agency GIZ to produce more specific guidance.

GCP Executive Director Annette Pensel made the case for collective action in the new report. "I believe it's time to collaborate on new ways of measurement to better understand what our collective efforts change for farmers," she said.

That's the right question, and my read is that purchase volumes won't answer it. A metric that can move this sharply on one company's sourcing change is telling you as much about methodology as about the coffee itself. The real test for 2026 is whether the industry settles on outcome measures for farmers or keeps debating the denominator.