Daily Coffee News photo. Coming into 2020, commodity coffee prices remained a common foe among coffee producers all over the globe, as the “C market price” remained woefully low. Then came 2020, and another C-word. As with retailers, roasters, traders, multinational conglomerates or mom-and-pop corner shops, it would be foolish to assume that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected coffee producer groups everywhere in the same way. Yet, as with all those other actors in the coffee chain, the pandemic has at once heightened and amplified the existing imbalances of power, risk and wealth. By many accounts, coffee farmworkers and small-scale coffee farmers were put into even more vulnerable positions by the pandemic, leading to documented increases in poverty, increased food insecurity, and increased farm abandonment.