22 • Brazil • C&CI May 2013
All eyes on Brazil as record off-year harvest starts
F
rom producers to traders, all agree that the new harvest is likely to produce the biggest ever crop in an ‘off year’ that Brazil has ever experienced, but opinions differ sharply about just how big the crop will be, and there is more at stake than volume alone. As the harvest gets underway, the world is watching more closely than ever. The size of the Brazilian crop has always prompted a lot of speculation, mainly because Brazil accounts for between a third and 40 per cent of worldwide production and exports in any given crop cycle.
However, with international prices hovering in a range between US$1.30 per pound and US$1.40/lb during most of March, far below the average cost of production of $1.80/lb in other producing countries, the guessing game about the size and impact of the new Brazil crop has never been more intense.
Much is at stake, not just for the market but for the Brazilian coffee industry at large, and officials are watching not just the actual size of the harvest, but also indicators of carry-over stocks and local consumption.
Good weather
“The present weather situation in coffee fields is excellent. From Espirito Santo, we hear that the yields for next Robusta crop will be fabulous and Arabica plentiful and also of high yield,” said John Wolthers, a trader with Santos-based exporters Comexim. “Cup wise, we will have to wait for the harvesting period to evaluate the crop and hope for dry weather during the process,” said Mr Wolthers, noting that the last crop was not of especially high quality. “In their preliminary crop forecast,
CONAB, Brazil’s crop forecasting agency, estimated that the harvest, at 47-50.2 million bags, would definitely be a record crop for an off‐year in the Brazilian biennial cycle. This would comprise between 35 and 37.5 million bags of Arabica,
With Brazil’s 2013-2014 coffee harvest only weeks away from starting, speculation about the size of the new crop in the world’s largest grower is more feverish than ever, as Maja Wallengren reports
2013-2014 may be an ‘off year’ but a huge harvest is still on the cards
compared to 38.3 million in 2012-2013, and 12 to 12.7 million bags of Conillon, compared to 12.5 million in the previous crop year,” said the ICO in its latest market report.
As has been reported by C&CI before, changing production patterns coupled with the different pace of renovation and replanting of old trees have increasingly leveled out the major difference traditionally seen between the biennial pattern of big and small crops. As replanting has gradually boosted the average tree density in producing regions, the balance between the newer and older trees has led to greater overall stability, with states such as Parana and Espirito Santo producing bigger crops of Arabica in off-years.
Among the factors creating uncertainty about the true size of the new crop is the continuing uncertainty about the final harvest numbers for the 2012-2013 crop.
Size of last crop still disputed
Even though everyone seems to agree that it was a record harvest, the numbers quoted are up to 6 million bags apart, a disparity which is high even for estimates of the Brazilian crop. From CONAB’s 2012-2013 figure of 50.48 million bags, compared with 43.5 million bags in the 2010-2011 off-year crop, they range as high as 56.45 million bags from Santos-based exporters Comexim.
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