Concerns about overly-dry weather in the early stages of the development of Brazil's coffee crop have eased after good showers this week that look set to continue, a forecaster and agronomist said. Trees had begun shedding some delicate blossoms due to dryness in the last few weeks after a burst of flowering that will essentially fix the size of the harvest in the 2012 crop in the world's No 1 coffee grower.
Heavy rains in the coffee belt early this week gave the soil a generous top up of moisture and agronomists point out that further flowering which is common in December will go some way to replacing the not-dramatic numbers of blossoms lost. Showers in the top coffee state Minas Gerais dropped up to 66 millimeters (2.6 inches) on the fields on Tuesday, about a third of what the state receives on average for all of November. "It has been raining and that has eased the worry," said agronomist Joaquim Goulart at Brazil's largest coffee co-operative, Cooxupe.
Forecaster Somar said there would be showers across the coffee producing areas in the first half of next week though volumes expected appeared low. Showers were likely to intensify towards the end of the month however. Brazil's 2012 harvest will be a larger 'on' year in the biennial up and down cycle. Some foreign analysts have spoken of a bumper 60-million-bag crop, an estimate local analysts scoff at, pointing out Brazil's output has never come close. The government will give an estimate for the crop in early January.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.