Frost in Brazil’s coffee regions will hit coffee harvest hard .
It looks like coffee prices are on the rise following a very unseasonal sharp frost in Brazil. Many growers have been hit hard.
A series of unseasonal frosts in the coffee-growing regions of Brazil has had a serious impact on Brazil’s coffee crop and is expected to impact on world supply of Arabica coffee beans. Brazil is the world’s largest coffee producer.
The first of the frosts came on Tuesday 29 June 2021 in the agricultural areas of Paraná, São Paulo and Minas Gerais. Additional frosts continued through most of the week but were compounded by a sudden frost on the morning of the 20th of July in which temperatures dropped below freezing over the space of a few minutes. According to Inmet, Brazil’s meteorology Institute, temperatures below -1 C were widespread and in some areas the temperature dropped to -5C.This unseasonal Brazilian frost has damaged trees and reduced the expectations for the harvest by up to 25%.
Impact on coffee harvest
The frost has caused many of the leaves on the trees to turn brown and black reducing their ability to photosynthesise and to nourish the trees. This is bad news for this year’s harvest but It is also expected to have an impact on the later harvests too as many of the shoots which hold the blossoms may also have been affected. It is too early to say how severe this impact will be. Bloomberg is reporting that large numbers of young trees and seedlings have been damaged, raising the prospect of interruption to the coffee supply for several years to come. One grower south of Minas Gerais said that 60% of his new seedlings were damaged and that around 25% of these plants had significant plant damage.
As most of the best coffee varieties are grown high on the mountains, the higher the plantation the more damage has been done to the trees. It is expected that the frost will have a disproportionate effect on the best quality coffee beans, widening the price differential between premium beans and other beans.
This frost comes after a year in which Brazil recorded its worst drought conditions in almost a century and. This year’s frost damage has hit trees that were already weakened by the heat stress from last year’s drought and high temperatures.
Coffee growers expecting lower yields.
This is bad news for coffee farmers, especially in the higher plantations. One of the growers whose coffee we have been buying for more than 20 years is expecting to have a 15% lower yield than expected. Obviously, he will have to raise his prices. This is also bad news for speciality coffee roasters like Dreambeans / Greenbean, because all of our Brazilian origins are premium beans and the vast majority of them are high grown. Many of our beans have the SHG (Strictly High Grown) designation and these are the beans that are expected to be most severely impacted.
Coffee futures sharply up.
Coffee futures are up 20% this week and up 60% since the start of the year. Unfortunately, it seems like some of our favourite beans will be in short supply and prices will be rising. Hopefully the damage will be at the better end of the predictions. I’ll post about this again when we know more.
Pat McArdle.