I’m not an expert on agricultural commodity exchanges, but at least some (like the Chicago board of trade) look like a cartel from the outside. The cartel controls distribution, and squeezes the producers and the consumers.
If that’s happening here, that’d explain how we can be in a situation where the (1) retailers want to buy coffee, but can’t afford the newly hiked price, (2) the producers are sitting on unsold inventory that they can’t discount, and, simultaneously (3) there’s a glut of distribution capacity and things like silos are sitting empty and going bankrupt.
That's not how exchanges generally operate. They generally simply match supply and demand.
An exchange setting prices is the literal opposite of a free marketplace. Is this more of a cartel, like OPEC?