A cold front brought wet weather to Brazil's main coffee-growing state Minas Gerais on Friday and more showers will fall over the weekend, private weather forecaster Somar said, frustrating farmer efforts to dry harvested beans. Showers in recent weeks have blighted harvesting work in the world's top coffee producer, keeping farmers out of the fields and causing headaches as they try to stop beans getting damp and taking on a fermented taste.
"It won't be more than 5 or 6 millimeters (0.2 inch). It won't be much but the rain will come ... It will affect the quality of the coffee," said Celso Oliveira from private weather forecaster Somar. Minas Gerais, which grows about half of Brazil's coffee, would see showers of 6 to 8 millimeters on Friday, Somar data showed.
Rains would also fall in smaller coffee-producing states Sao Paulo and Espirito Santo at the weekend. A mass of polar air behind the cold front is being held back to the south of the country and the coffee-growing areas are now quite warm for winter in the Southern Hemisphere.
Minimum temperatures of 10 to 20 degrees Celsius (50-68 degrees Fahrenheit) rule out any chance of a crop-damaging frost. Farmers are in the middle of harvesting the 2009/10 crop which has been estimated at 39.1 million 60-kg bags by government crop supply agency Conab and at up to 43.5 million bags by other entities. To see Somar data on rainfall in the past three days and showers forecast in all of Brazil's coffee areas.
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