SAO PAULO: Brazil coffee areas are seeing early flowering in the fields, experts said on Wednesday, while concerns about beans' quality increase, due to unusually high moisture in producing areas, an undesirable anomaly associated with the El Nino weather event.
Coffee harvest in Brazil, the world's largest producer and exporter, happens in winter time in the Southern Hemisphere, a usually dry period, which favors field work and drying of the beans before bagging and shipping.
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This year, however, the climate has been erratic with rains disrupting harvesting in June and July, and delaying shipments, one reason behind a recent spike in benchmark arabica coffee prices in New York.
"Bean quality is an issue. The high moisture can lead to fermentation of the beans, that can fall to the ground," said Guilherme Teixeira, a data processing coordinator at coffee co-op Cooxupe, during an event on Wednesday to evaluate the crop.
"Those harvest delays have coincided with rallies in the market," said Greg Oddo, a weather strategist at soft commodities trader Sucafina, in a video post to clients.
"The (overall) quality might not reach the fine quality
that end-users are looking for," he said.
Oddo, however, believes the size of the crop will mostly stay the same. Sucafina expects a record production in Brazil this year, above 75 million 60-kg bags.
The rains have induced some atypical flowering in July. Normally, Brazilian coffee will have its biggest flowering around September/October.
"The more flowering, more will be the competition among different sizes of fruit for the tree's energy," said Jose Donizeti Alves, a plant physiology professor at the Federal University of Lavras, adding that the situation could lead to early fruit dropping.
Sucafina's Oddo believes that one positive side of the higher moisture is to give trees enough health to sustain the upcoming flowerings and help fixate fruit in the branches.
