The Economist July 13, 2013 Mug’s game. Courtesy of The Economist NOT everyone appreciates the pungent smell of roasting coffee. Just ask the authorities in Brazil, who have been faced with farmers burning bags of beans and chanting slogans borrowed from recent nationwide protests to demand fatter state subsidies. The farmers are upset by falling prices: their beans now fetch around $106 a 60kg bag, a four-year low and less than half what they could get a couple of years ago. A reversal looks unlikely soon. A third of the world’s coffee is grown in Brazil. Along with other countries that mainly cultivate the tastier and pricier arabica-bean variety, it faces two problems. First, the traditional markets for their wares are saturated. Growth in Europe, America and Japan, which between them glug over half the world’s coffee, is flat. Second, in places like China, Indonesia and Brazil itself, where coffee is an affordable luxury for the middle class, the market is...