MEXICO CITY, Jan 11 (Reuters) – Unusually cold weather is
worrying coffee farmers in Mexico and Central America at the
peak of harvest season as ice on trees or heavy winds has
damaged coffee for export, regional producers said on Monday.
Recent freezing temperatures in Mexico’s coffee-growing
regions have affected at least 80,000 60-kg bags of coffee and
farmers are worried about future cold snaps, the national union
of coffee producers said.
Ice encased high-altitude coffee in the states of Hidalgo,
San Luis Potosi, Puebla and Veracruz for six hours over the
weekend, the head of the independent union said. This damaged
some beans and will prevent some cherries from maturing.
The coffee harvest runs from October to around March, and
December and January are peak picking months.
“The damage to quality in these areas could be almost 80
percent,” Gabriel Barreda told Reuters. He said the affected
areas had about 150,000 bags of coffee left to harvest for the
2009/10 season.
Growers in other coffee-producing states could find more
defects in their coffee if the bad weather continues, he said.
The union, which groups more than 220,000 growers around
the country, has predicted an overall drop in the 2009/10
coffee harvest as aging trees produce less.
Barreda said on Monday that this season’s production could
fall 33 percent to 3.45 million 60-kg bags.
In the 2008/09 coffee year, Mexico produced 4.6 million
60-kg bags of coffee.
Separately, Mexico’s national coffee association, Amecafe,
which is linked to the government, said in December it saw
production remaining steady in 2009/10.

STRONG WINDS IN CENTRAL AMERICA
The cold weather hitting Mexico and Central America is part
of the same cold front affecting the United States, which is
forecast to abate later this week.
Growers in El Salvador and Costa Rica were still assessing
potential damage from a weekend of high winds that may have
knocked cherries off trees in some places.
While they had “not yet” found any damage to their crops,
some of Costa Rica’s largest coffee producers said they were
closely monitoring conditions after winds as strong as 38 mph
(60 kph) downed trees and caused electrical outages.
“We hope that it’s over soon,” Jose Angel Vazquez, general
manager of Coopalmares, which sells its coffee to Starbucks
and Farmer Bros Co. told Reuters.
Costa Rica, known for its top-quality beans, is expecting a
larger harvest in 2009/10 compared with the previous cycle.
Agronomists at El Salvador’s national coffee institute were
in the fields on Monday evaluating the scale of the damage from
the weekend cold snap and sent out a letter to farmers last
Friday advising them to speed up the harvest.

Nairobi — A devastating disease of coffee plants that may have cost East African farmers as much as US$1 billion over the last ten years could be brought back under control after the rapid development of resistant varieties.

The disease – coffee wilt – is caused by a fungus and is present in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda.

It is not only lethal but also leaves the soil infected for many months and is the “largest single natural disaster ever to affect African coffee”, according to the Centre for Applied Biosciences International (CABI).

Scientists in Uganda released results this month (14 December) of a project in which they developed several resistant varieties of the coffee plant. Their results are described in a report of CABI’s seven-year study of the disease.

With the disease threatening to spread to West Africa from DRC, and to Kenya from Ethiopia, the new varieties could be rolled out to farmers as early as next year.

Georgina Hakiza, head of the coffee wilt disease programme at the Coffee Research Institute in Uganda said that despite the considerable effort spent on the new varieties, their mass production will be cheap as they are made from cuttings from mother plants (known as clones).

She added that the spread of the disease had also slowed recently because the researchers have educated farmers on control and prevention measures.

The CABI study has revealed that there are two forms of the disease, one attacking the Robusta coffee variety – the target of the Ugandan clone – and the other, found only in Ethiopia, attacking Arabica.

To control disease spread CABI is recommending quarantine, uprooting and burning of infected plant material, and leaving infected soils for at least a year before replanting.

It is also calling for more research to protect Arabica coffee in Kenya from the disease.

The disease was brought under control in the 1950s only to re-emerge in the 1990s, partly because of the situation in DRC.

“Conflict in the DRC weakened the country’s economy and coffee research was not spared, paving the way for return of the disease,” said Noah Phiri, a senior plant pathologist at CABI in Nairobi and co-author of the report.

Refugees from the war in DRC then spread the disease, which clings to soil.

CABI’s study involved scientists from Belgium, France, the United Kingdom and seven East African countries. It was funded by the Common Fund for Commodities, the European Union and the UK’s Department for International Development.

Giant rainforest trees, tiny fungi and wild coffee plants are among almost 300 species that have been described by UK botanists for the first time in 2009.

…Seven wild coffee species also feature on the list of new species, most of which were discovered in the mountains of northern Madagascar.

Two of the plants – Coffea ambongensis and Coffea boinensis – have the largest seeds of any coffee species, whose “beans” are more than twice the size of Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica), the main species used in commercial coffee production.

“Coffee is the world’s second most traded commodity, after oil, with at least 25 million farming families dependent on its production for their livelihoods,” explained RBG Kew’s coffee expert Aaron Davis.

“Yet, we still have much to learn about its wild relatives.”

Dr Davis estimated that almost three-quarters of the world’s wild coffee species were threatened, as a result of habitat loss and climate change.

“Conserving the genetic diversity within this genus has implications for the sustainability of our daily cup, particularly as coffee plantations are highly susceptible to climate change,” he added.

Professor Hopper said that, around the globe, about 2,000 species were described for the first time each year, adding that it was “vital” that these areas of botanical sciences were adequately funded and supported.

Kew Gardens has published profiles of the new species on its website, and added the information to Google Earth.

Bogota, Dec 21 – Colombia will likely produce one of its smallest coffee crops in 35 years, with some growers expecting production to fall nearly 30 percent from last year to no more than 8.0 million 60-kg bags in 2009.

The coffee growers’s federation in the world’s No. 3 coffee exporter has said coffee production will recover next year to 11 million bags as a result of more favorable weather conditions, a crop rejuvenation program bringing more trees into production and renewed fertilization.

Colombia, the world largest producer of top-quality of arabica beans, is struggling as the harvest has shown little sign of recovery in the last months of the year. Intense rains in 2008 and a coffee crop rejuvenation program took some fields out of production.

The coffee growers’s federation recently lowered its output target to around 8.3 million sacks in its fifth downward revision, producers said.

The Andean country produced 6.99 million bags in the first 11 months of the year, according to coffee federation.

In November output was 760,000 bags, down 19 percent from the same month a year earlier. November output marks the 19th consecutive monthly fall in production from year-earlier levels, according to federation.

But registering an output of 1.31 million bags in December to meet the target will be “simply impossible,” said Hector Falla, who represents coffee producers for the southeastern province of Huila.

“The country’s coffee production could be below 8 million bags. Output in December is seen as diminished as we have seen production throughout the year,” Falla said.

Huila accounts for 11 percent of the country’s total output and is the fourth heaviest-weighted province in terms of production.Colombia’s 2008 coffee output was 11.4 million bags and 12.6 million bags in 2007.

Javier Bohorquez, who represents coffee producers for the central province of Cundinamarca, said production will pick up in December propelled by increasing output in the coffee-rich central production area known as the “Eje Cafetero” but the recovery will not be enough to reach the annual target.

Bohorquez estimates production in the last month of the year at 1 million bags, which would bring the total output ending at around 7.99 million bags.

Lower rainfall starting in April has led to an “excellent” flowering of coffee plants, he said.

“Unfortunately, the sharpest increase of production will be seen in the first months of next year,” Bohorquez said

There were 15,600 bags on offer at yesterday’s auction, of which most were confirmed as sold.
The first new crop estate coffees were available, and exporters started taking positions ahead of what promises to be a shorter crop year for the trade.
The lower crop, the perceived lack of quality coffees from other origins, and now the growing tension over Colombia’s internal supply situation are all just fuel for the fire of Kenya differentials at the moment. AA only accounted for 10% of the volume on offer, and this is what buyers need to track going forward. The expectation is that the drought experienced throughout much of 2009 has restricted the development of the bean size, and therefore demand for Kenya AA will not be met in the coming crop – unless premiums go higher.

Quality wise, we are not disappointed by the first estate coffees on offer. Most Socfinaf estates were FAQ quality, with some better cups mixed in. The next – and last auction of the year – will be held on 15th Dec. We expect around 25,000 bags to be available, as suppliers try to push out as much volume as possible before the month long Christmas break.