STiR coffee and tea magazine

20 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 4, 2021 (August / September) By Maja Wallengren, origins contributing editor, STiR coffee and tea T The frost damage to Brazil's coffee growing areas is so extensive that major replanting will be required. A regular production cycle will not be achieved until 2025. (Photo courtesy of Fernando Barboso.) ravelling over 2,500 kilometers overland through Brazil's frost damaged coffee fields to see the utter devastation is so compounding to witness that it is hard to find words that adequately describe the situation. Overwhelming is the word that find its way back to the conversation with Brazilian coffee growers spread out over an area hit by frost so extensive that it covers 65% of the total Brazil harvest in an average crop cycle. Brazil's Agriculture Ministry forecasts a preliminary figure of minimum a 10-12 million bags in frost losses to the next 2022 harvest, for which flowering starts around the end of September to early October. This figure is based on the percentage of area so severely affected that coffee production will not start to recover until the 2024 and 2025 crops, but it does not include the much larger area of coffee farms which will have to be renovated or replanted because of the uneven impact of damage by the frost. On the Ground, Exclusive Reporting… Brazil: Situation Worsens; Industry Faces Supply Challenges Through 2025 The global coffee trade enters an unexpected wave of turmoil as the most damaging frost in over 40 years hit an unprecedented majority of growing regions across Brazil, the world's largest coffee producing and exporting country. Top government officials told STiR coffee and tea in early August the latest figures for losses will be around 10-12 million 60-kilogram bags. Around 10-15% of the entire cultivated area was hit with varying degrees; of many with losses as high as 30-60% of planted fields. Global supply is at risk as the timeline for either pruning – or, as in many cases entire replanting of vast parts of farms – will be impossible to catch up with until the 2025 production cycle, agricultural experts said. Coffee grower Virginia Aguiar at her Fazenda Semente in the Cerrado region inspects what little is left of her farm after the frost damage. Photo by Maja Wallengren.

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