What the two numbers at the top actually are
The cards above carry two prices and the gap between them. They are not versions of the same figure.
The ICE Coffee “C” is the world benchmark for Arabica. It prices physical delivery of exchange-grade green beans, from any one of twenty origin countries, into a licensed warehouse. It is a futures contract. The quote on this page comes from a public delayed feed, and the page prints the quote’s own timestamp rather than implying it is live — read that stamp before you read the number.
The ICO Other Milds indicator is a physical price. Each market day the International Coffee Organization takes ex-dock prompt-shipment quotes for a named list of growths and averages them. The list is not generic. Under the ICO’s Rules on Statistics — Indicator Prices (ICC-105-17 Rev. 1), the Other Mild Arabicas basket collected in the USA is:
Costa Rica Hard Bean · Guatemala Prime Washed · Honduras High Grown · Mexico Prime Washed
and the basket collected in Germany is:
El Salvador Strictly High Grown · Guatemala Hard Bean · Honduras High Grown European preparation
Guatemala appears by name in both. That is the whole reason this page exists: of the four ICO group indicators published every day, Other Milds is the one with Guatemalan coffee physically inside it, and almost nothing written in English says so.
Two things the rules also fix, and that matter when you read the number: prices are collected ex-dock, for prompt shipment, and they are quoted “on a differential basis to the New York and London futures exchanges.” The ICO requires quotations from at least three traders or brokers in the USA for each growth. So the indicator is a small, human-sourced physical survey — not a market with a tape.
The differential, and what to do with it
The differential card is Other Milds minus the C. A positive result puts Other Milds above the C; a negative result puts it below. Read the current card rather than assuming the sign stays the same.
Read it as a level, not as a tick. The two legs are not simultaneous — the C quote is intraday and delayed, the ICO row is a previous-market-day physical indicator — and this page stamps each one separately so you can see the mismatch rather than be fooled by it.
What the level is for:
- If you sell coffee, the differential is the part of your price that quality and origin earn, as opposed to the part the exchange hands everyone. When the C falls and Other Milds falls less, the differential is doing work for you.
- If you buy green coffee, the C is your hedge instrument and Other Milds is a physical-market reference. Budgeting off the C alone omits the differential, which can change in size and sign.
- If you are neither, the differential is the fastest read on whether a coffee-price headline is about Guatemala or about Brazil and the weather. A move in the C with a stable differential is a global story. A move in the differential is an origin story.
The C in quetzales — and the trap in that sentence
A Guatemalan quintal is 100 pounds, which makes the conversion almost suspiciously easy: US cents per pound × 100 lb ÷ 100 = US dollars per quintal. The two numbers are numerically identical. A C at 277.20 US cents per pound is US$277.20 per quintal. Multiply by the Banguat reference rate — this page reads it from our own exchange-rate feed rather than typing it, and the card shows the rate and its date — and you have quetzales per quintal.
That is exactly the number that turns up on Guatemalan radio as “el precio del quintal”, and it is the number most often misused. It is a benchmark expressed in quetzales, not a payment. Between it and a producer sit milling, transport, export cost, quality differentials and the contract the coffee was actually sold under. This page does not publish a farmgate price, because no source we could read on 20 September 2026 publishes one.
Where the price has been: twelve months, from the ICO’s own table
Monthly averages in US cents per pound, verbatim from Table 1 of the ICO Coffee Market Report, August 2026:
| Month | I-CIP composite | Colombian Milds | Other Milds | Brazilian Naturals | Robustas | New York* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep-25 | 324.62 | 403.77 | 400.21 | 374.91 | 210.85 | 366.31 |
| Oct-25 | 326.38 | 403.25 | 403.79 | 373.47 | 215.06 | 366.00 |
| Nov-25 | 330.44 | 408.75 | 410.31 | 380.17 | 214.91 | 373.57 |
| Dec-25 | 304.68 | 382.32 | 381.14 | 355.38 | 190.53 | 347.71 |
| Jan-26 | 296.89 | 371.59 | 363.94 | 343.77 | 192.52 | 334.99 |
| Feb-26 | 267.57 | 330.89 | 321.35 | 308.62 | 179.73 | 288.76 |
| Mar-26 | 273.70 | 337.45 | 334.34 | 320.51 | 176.77 | 290.18 |
| Apr-26 | 266.24 | 334.56 | 331.22 | 313.76 | 164.64 | 284.63 |
| May-26 | 256.05 | 323.45 | 315.42 | 293.73 | 166.51 | 268.18 |
| Jun-26 | 248.90 | 324.60 | 307.83 | 272.01 | 169.39 | 256.75 |
| Jul-26 | 287.26 | 383.39 | 358.65 | 320.69 | 184.78 | 310.34 |
| Aug-26 | 287.29 | 387.46 | 361.31 | 322.24 | 180.63 | 313.20 |
* The ICO’s own footnote: “Average prices for 2nd and 3rd positions”.
Within this historical table, Other Milds peaked at 410.31 in November 2025 and bottomed at 307.83 in June 2026 — a fall of about a quarter — before recovering to 361.31 in August 2026. The card at the top shows the daily indicator with its own observation date; compare that reading with the historical averages rather than assuming its position stays the same.
The ICO’s August report also puts numbers on the shape of that August: the I-CIP “averaged 287.29 US cents/lb in August 2026, effectively unchanged from July 2026 (287.26 US cents/lb), and ranging between 279.38 and 301.97”. Other Milds volatility was 15.7%, down 2.1 points on July. Futures “remained in backwardation, consistent with tight near-term availability”, with the mid-month rally driven by “heightened expectations of a strong El Niño event, superimposed on historically low certified Arabica stocks” and reversed by “favourable rainfall in Brazil”. If El Niño is the driver, our El Niño / La Niña tracker covers what it does on the Guatemalan side.
The differentials the ICO itself publishes
From the same report, August 2026 monthly averages, in US cents per pound:
| Differential | Jul-26 | Aug-26 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colombian Milds − Other Milds | 24.74 | 26.15 | +5.7% |
| Other Milds − Brazilian Naturals | 37.96 | 39.07 | +2.9% |
| Other Milds − Robustas | 173.86 | 180.67 | +3.9% |
| New York − London arbitrage | 137.61 | 145.56 | +5.8% |
The first row is the one worth watching from Guatemala: it is how far Guatemalan-grade washed arabica sits below Colombian, and it widened in August.
Guatemala’s exports in the ICO’s August 2026 report
The ICO’s August 2026 report, on July 2026 green-bean shipments:
“Shipments of the Other Milds decreased by 6.7% to 2.27 million bags in July 2026 … Nicaragua was the main driver of the decline, where exports fell 63.1% … This decrease was partly offset by Guatemala and Honduras, whose exports were up 29.7% and 16.3%, respectively, to 0.34 million bags and 0.53 million bags versus 0.26 million bags and 0.46 million bags in July 2025.”
Bags are 60 kg. For the coffee year to date, Other Milds exports run 24,302 thousand bags, up 9.4% on 2024/25 — the only Arabica group that grew. One month is a data point, not a trend, and this page will not call it one.
Anacafé: check the local reference separately
Guatemala’s national coffee association publishes a link to local reference prices. On 23 October 2026 in Guatemala, its home page returned HTTP 200. The reference-price page also returned HTTP 200, but only an application shell without readable price figures in our HTTP fetch.
That does not establish a site outage. We have no verified local reference-price figure from this check, so this page does not quote one. Check Anacafé’s own reference page for a domestic quote; the international benchmarks above are different instruments.
What this page is not
- Not a retail price. Roasted coffee on a Guatemalan shelf is a different instrument with its own page: coffee retail price in Guatemala, which carries our retail estimate alongside MAGA’s official wholesale quotes for La Terminal and CENMA.
- Not a farmgate price. Nothing read here publishes what a producer is paid.
- Not a forecast. The ICO’s report gives reasons for August’s moves; it does not predict September’s, and neither do we.
- Not a live tape. The C quote is delayed and the ICO row is a previous market day. Both stamps are printed. If you are trading, use your broker’s feed.
For the rest of Guatemala’s commodity picture, the same discipline applies on our corn and bean price page, where MAGA’s per-quintal wholesale quotes come with their own market and observation date. If you want to see the crop rather than the curve, Antigua’s farms run visits year-round — see coffee tours in Antigua.