Coffee Arabica Price History: Monthly Global Price Since 1992

Arabica is the premium coffee variety, prized for its smoother flavour and grown at altitude where it is acutely sensitive to frost and drought. It accounts for roughly 60% of world coffee output, with Brazil as the dominant producer. This dataset tracks the IMF Primary Commodity Prices benchmark for arabica coffee — the “Other Mild Arabicas” indicator — published monthly in US cents per pound and distributed via FRED under the code PCOFFOTMUSDM, with continuous coverage since 1992.

Dataset: Arabica Coffee Price (1992–2026) · Updated 2026-03-01

Source: IMF Primary Commodity Prices · International Monetary Fund (via FRED)

Macro Takeaway

Dataset Overview

Dataset Variables

The CSV and Excel files contain the following columns. Each row represents one calendar month.

Column names match the CSV headers exactly.

Download the Complete Dataset

The full dataset is available in CSV and Excel formats — monthly observations covering more than three decades.

FRED Direct CSV Access

The underlying data is published in the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) database under the series code PCOFFOTMUSDM, sourced from the IMF Primary Commodity Prices dataset:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=PCOFFOTMUSDM

The Eco3min dataset mirrors the same monthly series, packaged in a stable, versionable CSV with consistent column names — designed for direct ingestion in Python, R, or any data pipeline. The URL never changes, making it suitable for automated scripts.

Direct CSV Access — Eco3min Structured Dataset

https://eco3min.fr/dataset/coffee-arabica-price.csv

This URL returns the complete dataset in CSV format. It can be used directly in pandas, R, curl, or any data tool.

Using the Dataset in Python

import pandas as pd

url = "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/coffee-arabica-price.csv"
df = pd.read_csv(url, parse_dates=["date"])

print(df.head())
print(df["arabica_price"].describe())

df.plot(x="date", y="arabica_price", title="Arabica Coffee Price", legend=False)

Using the Dataset in R

library(readr)

url <- "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/coffee-arabica-price.csv"
df <- read_csv(url)

head(df)
summary(df$arabica_price)

Both examples load the dataset directly from the URL — no download or API key required.

Methodology

The IMF reports the “Other Mild Arabicas” indicator price in US cents per pound, derived from the International Coffee Organization (ICO) indicator and the New York ICE arabica market.

Values are monthly averages, which smooth the intra-month swings visible in daily futures and physical quotes. The series begins in 1992.

This dataset is updated monthly via an automated pull from the FRED API (series PCOFFOTMUSDM) by an Eco3min pipeline running on GitHub Actions, which regenerates the cleaned CSV and Excel files and refreshes the page metadata.

Data Quality & Provider Notes

The IMF/benchmark price is a widely cited physical-market reference. A few provider-specific points matter when using this series.

• Release latency. The IMF publishes Primary Commodity Prices monthly, typically in the first week of the following month. FRED ingests the update shortly after, and Eco3min mirrors it with a monthly pull. The series is not a real-time price.
• Monthly average vs futures spot. This series is a monthly average. It will differ from any single exchange settlement, and a monthly average necessarily understates intra-month peaks.
• Revisions. Prices are market-derived and not subject to the vintage revisions of survey-based macro series, though the IMF can restate recent observations.
• Alternative sources. ICE futures and the originating auction or indicator bodies provide higher-frequency or contract-specific quotes.

Common Pitfalls When Using This Series

1. Confusing nominal and real prices. This series is nominal. Comparing an early-1990s reading to a recent one without adjusting for cumulative inflation overstates the real change. Deflating by CPI gives the true purchasing-power move.
2. Reading the monthly average as a market price. Headlines quote exchange futures; this dataset reports the monthly benchmark average. The two diverge most during fast-moving rallies.
3. Unit confusion. This series is in US cents per pound; ICE arabica futures are also quoted in cents per pound, but news commonly cites dollars per pound (for example, $4.00 equals 400 cents).

Historical Regimes

1992–1999 — Frost spikes and deregulation. Severe Brazilian frosts in 1994 sent prices sharply higher, while the earlier collapse of the International Coffee Agreement quota system left the market structurally oversupplied between shocks.

2000–2004 — The coffee crisis. Vietnam’s rapid expansion into robusta and a Brazilian surplus pushed prices to multi-decade lows, around 45-60 cents per pound — a period of acute hardship for smallholder growers worldwide.

2005–2011 — Recovery to a cyclical peak. Tightening supply and rising global demand carried arabica back toward 300 cents per pound by 2011.

2012–2019 — Long decline. Persistent oversupply and a strong US dollar dragged prices down to roughly 87 cents per pound in 2019, the lowest since 2005.

2020–2023 — Pandemic and frost. A severe 2021 Brazilian frost and pandemic logistics disruptions lifted prices toward 260 cents by 2022, followed by a partial correction in 2023.

2024–2025 — Record territory. Brazil’s worst drought in seven decades and a parallel robusta shortage drove ICE arabica above $4 per pound (over 400 cents) for the first time in February 2025, breaking the 1977 record.

Related Macroeconomic Datasets

Commodity Price Hub

This dataset is part of the Eco3min commodity price repository — energy, metals, agricultural softs, and grains, all sourced from IMF Primary Commodity Prices via FRED.

Explore the Commodity Price Hub

Sources

• International Monetary Fund — Primary Commodity Prices, Global Price of Arabica Coffee
• Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — FRED database, series PCOFFOTMUSDM
• International Coffee Organization (ICO) — indicator prices underlying the IMF series

Dataset Reference

Eco3min Research. (2026). Arabica Coffee Price — Global Monthly Price (1992-2026). Source: IMF Primary Commodity Prices via FRED.<br> https://eco3min.fr/en/coffee-arabica-price-history-dataset/