There were a series of crop failures, most notably in Brazil, the main coffee grower in the world, in the early 1990s which meant that coffee prices increased dramatically. World market prices can help tribal villagers make a profit or as in the years 2001 to 2005, the prices fell so low, that tribal farmers in Yercaud actually made a loss on their coffee crops, and many estate owners left the coffee plants with minimum maintenance therefore needing to pay few tribal workers until the prices began to rise in 2005. Such trends affected Indian small farmers dramatically and adversely as they depend totally on the earnings from their crops or by working in the near-by estates.

A wider problem is globalisation. Men sitting in offices in New York or London make decisions about prices of coffee without any thought as to the impact it will have on the local producers in places like Yercaud.

Trade agreements on coffee bean prices must be fairer and consult the very people whom they are likely to affect. People in the west should be encouraged to pay fair prices for the products they consume. Often coffee beans grown in India cost more in India than in Western countries, particularly when beans are exported and returned to India in the freeze-dried powder form. There must be more packaging of goods near to where they are produced so that the countries producing the foods get the maximum profit from the final form the product is sold as.