Brazil's 2019 coffee to suffer decrease in quality and quantity

The quality of Brazil's next coffee crop may be compromised due to excessive flowering, which results in beans that lack uniformity at harvest time, an industry leader said on Thursday. Carlos Paulino, chief executive of the world's largest coffee producers cooperative Cooxupé, said the phenomenon, which is related to abundant rains during the development period, also makes it harder to estimate the size of the next crop.
Considering 2019 is an off-year in Arabica coffee's biannual cycle, the situation may lead to an even steeper fall in production, Paulino said. While rain is usually good for coffee, too much can prompt excessive flowering, causing beans to be at different stages of development at harvest time. "This will begin affecting bean quality," Paulino said in a telephone interview. "Next year, if harvesting starts early, there will be ripe as well as unripe beans collected. If harvesting starts late, there will be ripe beans and beans on the floor."
Brazil, the world's largest producer and exporter of the commodity, will start harvesting its 2019 beans in the second quarter of next year. Paulino predicted that Brazilian farmers, who he said are in need of cash, will harvest early and will end up collecting a mixture of good coffee and unripe coffee, the latter being less valuable. Also, because of high labor-related costs, Brazilian farmers do not selectively harvest coffee trees. That's because most use machines instead of people, making it more difficult to pick and choose which trees to harvest first, Paulino said.
The situation marks a sharp contrast with the initial outlook for the crop this year, when a drought between September and October hampered the flowering process. Brazil's coffee production in 2018, which was harvested earlier in the year, ended at a record high of nearly 60 million bags. Cooxupé expects to close 2018 sourcing a record volume of coffee from its associate farmers, but exports will fall below expectations due to a lack of available shipping space, Paulino said.
Cooxupé's exports are forecast to end the year at between 3.9 million and 4 million bags, in line with 2017 but below a projected 4.2 million bags, he said. Paulino said exports were affected by a truckers' strike in May, which brought Brazil's economy to an almost complete halt for over a week.