Gourmet Coffees

Brazil exported 1.51 million bags of green coffee in April down 15 % from the 1.77 million bags shipped a year earlier Cecafe announced Friday. This drop in exports will not have come as any great surprise with a smaller crop, diminishing internal stocks and a stronger currency. The president of Cecafe, Joao Antonio Lian, said last week that Brazil will never average more than 25 60-kg bags of coffee per hectare. For the current season the average is around 19 bags per hectare. Of course yields vary tremendously from 60 bags per hectare in some areas in Minas to only a handful in some lesser regions.

If average yield this season is around 19 bags and the country is expected to produce a total of around 44 million bags then, we calculate, an absolute total of just under 58 million bags should be possible if average yields hit 25 bags per hectare across the current planted area. Needless to say this is very unlikely so the only way that total production could hit 60 million bags (a figure probably needed in 10 years time) is for an expansion in the planted area of advances in crop science.