Guatemala, El Salvador Say Coffee Safe from Cold

Jan 13 – Guatemala’s coffee harvest was not hurt by unusually cold weather in recent days, said the national coffee association on Wednesday, while neighboring El Salvador said its crops were also spared serious damage.

Technical experts from Guatemala’s coffee organization Anacafe completed an evaluation of farms around the country and found that while beans were not damaged, the harvest could be delayed.

“The information we have shows the areas where coffee is still maturing are not reporting damages from the low temperatures, only that there will be some delays,” Anacafe said in a statement. But the estimate for the size of the overall 2009/10 crop, with 4.1 million 60-kg bags of production and 3.68 million in exports, will stay the same.

Guatemala is Central America’s largest coffee producer.

Neighboring El Salvador was hit over the weekend by high winds, part of the cold front affecting the United States and Mexico but the national coffee organization said the impact were not serious.

“Preliminary results show the winds minimally impacted the cherries and the foliage in the majority of coffee-growing regions,” a statement from El Salvador’s coffee council said.

Mexico, which produced 4.6 million bags of coffee in the 2008/09 s