STiR coffee and tea magazine

Volume 3, Number 1

Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/491350

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 22 of 75

STiR tea & coffee industry international 23 Then in December, when a record crop in Brazil appeared to almost single hand- edly guarantee an excess, torrential rains — the worst deluge in 90 years — led com- modity brokers to estimate production will decline to 51 million bags this year from 57.2 million last year. Projections that ranged as high as 60 million bags were quickly revised. The good news is that Arabica prices surged on the news. All these factors — uncertainty about volumes and quality, and that the composite dipped below $1 per pound — have shifted the present course of negotiations. And, as several buyers acknowledged, strategies and supplier relationships will change if the rust crisis continues. Fearing price spikes Last spring projections about how hard the crisis would hit supply levels and workers were stark for the 2012/13 harvest. In El Salvador, for example, the number of work- ers expected to be out of seasonal jobs was more than 325,000. The actual numbers, with about 60,000 more working than expected, is hardly a cause for optimism. Molly Laverty, sustainable green coffee supply and procurement manager at Farm- er Brothers observed that, "Starting last year when roya was really coming to the atten- tion of coffee buyers, a lot of us were hearing the same kind of stories from producers. It seemed a little bit apocalyptic at first — the devastation that this would have on coffee volumes coming out of Central America." Guatemala is an interesting case in understanding how to interpret projections. Re- ports on what buyers could expect in terms of decreased production at a country level varied depending on source, with some suggesting a 70% decline in volumes and oth- ers only 59%. Either case presented challenges to buyers who rely on the unique char- acteristics of coffees from Atitlan or Huehuetenango to please their customers' palates. For this harvest season, "there appears to be a lot of speculation in Guatemala. It's not clear whether producers are holding off and waiting for a better price. Price discussions are taking longer than normal to complete: a week instead of a couple of days," said Cuevas. Close up of infected coffee leaf at El Mirador in Costa Rica. A single CLR lesion produces up to six crops of spores during its three to five month reproductive cycle, releasing 400,000 spores that drift on the breeze to infect nearby leaves. The 19th century botanist Harry Marshall Ward studied coffee leaf rust in Ceylon and is credited for discovering when roya was most vulnerable to intervention. He was unable to stop the outbreak that led to the eventual demise of coffee cultivation there, though he did make a number of important observations that led to the ability to control rust today. Ward proposed that fungicides be applied before spores can move from the germination to the colonization stage. To this day, studies show the importance of proper timing when applying such controls. Emergency access to funds and fungicides has had an impact in many Central American coun- tries but such measures prove little more than a stopgap for some. Molly Laverty, sustainable green coffee supply and procurement manager at Farmer Brothers, relayed a common problem: "We have one farm in El Salvador whose neighbors aren't protecting their farm very well, whose farms are totally destroyed by roya. And they found it extra difficult to control for roya because every time they sprayed fungicides, a couple weeks later they'd have to do it again." Once roya takes hold, however, little can be done to slow its progression. Rust robs the devel- oping coffee cherries of nutrients after it penetrates the leaf. Many trees still produce, though the now-starved fruit yields a very different cup quality than one would expect. Buyers began noticing this tendency with the 2012/13 harvest. Jose Cuevas, director of trade at Sustainable Harvest, explains: "The biggest problem has turned out to be quality because Roya has an effect on maturation of the cherry resulting in underde- veloped, cereal-like, and vegetal flavors. This is because the loss of leaf prevented sugars from fully developing. That flavor problem caught a lot of people off-guard." The Oregon-based importer Cuevas works for hosted its annual supply chain conference, Let's Talk Coffee, in El Salvador in 2013. The team also organized a companion event to follow open to all in the trade called Let's Talk Roya. The Quality Problem The timing of defoliation due to coffee leaf rust has varying effects on cup quality. At Let's Talk Coffee, attendees were en- couraged to blindly taste two coffees between sessions. Volunteers recorded answers to a brief survey about each taster's cupping ex- perience. Few were surprised when results revealed that even inexperienced cuppers could distinguish which sample came from a roya-affected farm. Sustainable Harvest staff planned the analytical cupping session that took place at Let's Talk Roya months in advance, inviting producers and roasters to participate. To avoid differences being introduced by processing, all underwent the same washed process and were roasted to the same profile. The nine coffees sampled included two controls: a Castillo, a hybrid of Arabica and Robusta bred to be resistant to rust; and a Caturra from a farm affected by broca, a cof- fee berry borer, but not by roya. The remaining seven samples were all Caturra and came from producers who ex- perienced varying damage from rust. Cuppers preferred those coffees that experienced less leaf loss overall. The timing of defoliation in the overall production cycle seemed to be a confounding factor. Samples from farms that lost a higher percentage of leaves earlier in the growing season tended to receive the lowest scores.

Articles in this issue

Archives of this issue

view archives of STiR coffee and tea magazine - Volume 3, Number 1