After surging in the spring, the prices of goods like lumber, corn and soybeans have come back down to Earth. Coffee is headed in the opposite direction.What's happening: Futures for robusta coffee, which is often used to make espresso, recently jumped as high as $2,024 per ton, their highest level in four years. Analysts are pointing to adverse weather in Brazil as well as COVID-19 restrictions in Vietnam."Brazil is the largest coffee producer in the world," Warren Patterson, ING's head of commodities strategy, told me. "They've been hit with quite a bad drought this year and it's been followed by frost," which has seriously harmed the country's coffee trees.Arabica futures for December are up 3% this month after climbing 18% in July.What it means: Companies like Starbucks buy coffee ahead of time and have hedging strategies in place to lock in prices. But J.M. Smucker, which owns the Folgers and Dunkin' coffee brands, said last week that rising costs will still affect its business, especially since it's already contending with more expensive transportation and packaging."As we came into the fiscal year, we were anticipating mid single-digit cost inflation as a percent of our total cost of goods sold," J.M. Smucker's Chief Financial Officer Tucker Marshall told analysts. "Now we're seeing high single-digit cost inflation."Consumers could pay some of the difference. JDE Peet's, whose coffee portfolio includes Peet's Coffee and Stumptown, said earlier this month that it had some hedging "in place" but was thinking hard about its pricing strategy.Another commodity that's been on the rise recently is oil. Prices are being closely monitored on Monday for effects from Hurricane Ida, which has now weakened to a tropical storm. More than 95% of the Gulf of Mexico's oil production facilities have been shut down, regulators said Sunday.Brent crude futures were gaining ground even before Ida hit, rising 11.5% last week thanks to optimism that China appeared to have the delta variant under control. It was the best week for the global oil benchmark since spring 2020.Economists often strip out volatile energy and food prices when they track inflation. But higher costs can still impact inflation expectations among businesses and consumers, which are closely tracked by central banks like the Federal Reserve.Fed Chair Jerome Powell indicated Friday that the central bank, which has been buying $120 billion worth of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities every month since the height of the pandemic to support the economy, will start pumping the brakes before the end of the year.Yet data on inflation — and how long it will persist — remains murky, as weather events and ongoing supply chain pressures throw new curveballs. That complicates the decision-making process for policymakers at a delicate moment.

A cup of coffee is how many people start the day. While prices have gone up during the pandemic, they could go up again. "In the gas world, you and I would call this price gouging," said Tracy Allen, who's been in the coffee business since the 1980s.Allen runs a company called Brewed Behavior, helping developing countries grow and sell coffee.The world's largest coffee producer is Brazil and it is in a drought. But Allen said that's not the only thing pushing prices."Because of COVID, there was so much downtime, and nobody's working, nothing's moving, and now everybody's gearing back up, there's a shortage of shipping containers," Allen said.With a shortage of shipping containers and coffee beans sitting on foreign docks, the price to ship it here has gone way up."So for me to get a container from Sumatra right now, which is typically $1,000 to $1,500 to get it to the U.S. is now close to $6,000," Allen said.If you pay $10 a pound for coffee at the grocery store, Allen said do not be surprised to see that same coffee selling for $13 to $14 a pound. He also said that he looks for big sellers, such as Starbucks and Dunkin to raise prices, too.The even bigger question is once shipments return to normal, will the price come down?"And then the real question is, how many of those roasters are going to go back and take the price back down once it's up there right?" Allen said."So do you see this price hike as something permanent?" sister station KMBC asked."I'll fall short of saying it's temporary. I wish I knew," Allen said.