Wild Weather Whacks Coffee Prospects In Budding Brazil Crop Zone
From: msn.com
(Bloomberg) — Brazil’s Cerrado region, which boosted its coffee-planting area to tap into a commodity boom, faces dimming prospects for this season’s crop following adverse weather.
Bouts of freezing temperatures, extreme heat and dryness combined to erode tree conditions in the second half of last year, Francisco Sergio de Assis, the president of Federation of Coffee Growers in Cerrado, said by telephone. The region in Minas Gerais state, which boosted output by 60% in the past decade, almost double the national average. It now accounts for a 10th of all beans grown in Brazil, the top exporter.
This year, production in the Cerrado may be less than 6 million bags, down from a potential as high as 7.5 million bags, Assis said. That would mark a smaller regional crop than in 2018, the previous higher-yielding season in the two-year cycle.
