Experts in Brazil are quantifying coffee plants as prices reach 10-year highs.

Listen to this Article Now Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Coffee experts working for commodity trading organizations are touring the coffee heartland in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, examining harvest forecasts for 2022 just as prices approach their highest levels in ten years.

Coffee growing in Brazil, the world’s top producer, has had a rough year. After a drought and subsequent frosts destroyed up to 20% of coffee trees, prices skyrocketed, threatening future production.

Those studying crops have produced broad projections for the 2022 harvest so far, while traders are still banking on a less successful crop for the time being.

Between now and the end of January, the best time for crop evaluation, those touring the fields will discover the reality.

“The rains that followed the frosts and drought produced a nice flowering, but now we have to see how many of those will grow into cherries,” said Ryan Delany, chief analyst at U.S. based Coffee Trading Academy LLC.

After the drought, frosts, and then a global container scarcity that impeded shipment, Arabica coffee futures on ICE (NYSE: ICE) surged more than 90% this year.

Farmers in Brazil, Colombia, and other countries have defaulted on pre-sold coffee supplies as a result of the price increase. Experts strive to count pinhead cherries in the branches throughout the excursions in order to produce more detailed projections.

So far, the figures that have been released have been widely disparate. Judy Ganes, a soft commodities expert who recently visited Brazil with colleague analyst Shawn Hackett, put Brazil’s Arabica production at about 36 million bags, one of the market’s lower predictions.

Drought and frosts, according to Ganes, harmed the trees’ vegetative health, which others aren’t completely accounting for.

She estimates that Brazil’s overall crop (including the robusta type) would be 55 million bags, a long cry from the record breaking 2020 crop, the last “on-year” crop in the biannual production cycle, which was about 70 million bags.

According to Jonas Ferraresso, a Brazilian coffee agronomist, blossom was widespread following October rains, but fruit conversion was below average.

“Many trees developed new leaves in the branches instead of berries, an unusual development probably linked to the harsh drought earlier in the year,” he said.

Story by : Norvisi Mawunyegah