One of the world’s most popular beverages has overcome remarkable hurdles to carry on during the pandemic. What does it take to make a cup of coffee in 2020?In what has been a strange year for those people forced to work from home, little daily habits have helped to sustain normality. But there are a lot of people you have to thank for your mid-morning coffee break.This year has not been easy for people in the coffee industry, including 25 million smallholder farmers who are responsible for growing 80% of the world’s coffee. In total, 125 million people depend on coffee for their livelihood, from transporting and roasting the beans to selling the final product. Baristas and coffee shop owners were some of the first to close the doors to their businesses as lockdowns began. Some never reopened.Despite the incredibly challenging working environment imposed by Covid-19 restrictions, consumers have still been able to get their hands on their favourite drink, thanks largely to the resilience of coffee producers and supply chains.Why have some parts of the industry thrived while others struggled to survive? And how did producers and retailers innovate to keep delivering our daily caffeine hit?The world’s largest producer of coffee, Brazil, is having a bumper year. Coffee harvests naturally fluctuate year-on-year as the premium bean – arabica – follows a biennial cycle. Arabica makes up the majority of Brazil’s coffee crop, and while efforts to smooth out the year-on, year-off cycle have helped to make each annual return more consistent, there is still a bit of a dip in bean production in off-years.With an output of 67.9 million bags of coffee, each weighing 60kg, 2020/21 is set to be the best year on record for coffee production in Brazil – up more than three million bags compared to the previous on-year for arabica.Coffee producer Daterra are no exception. Daterra’s chief agronomist João Reis forecasts an “exceptional” harvest for quantity and quality this year as weather conditions worked in their favour. The problem posed by coronavirus for Reis was in harvesting the crop.