23-Year High Harvest For Colombia?

The business of producing forecasts and making accurate predictions is a funny old game, one that often flies in the face of logic.

Despite feeling the effects of El Nino, Colombia is set to recorded its highest coffee harvest in nearly a quarter of a century.

US officials have looked at the data, analysed the weather patterns and believe that the mild, drought-like conditions could actually benefit the South American country’s coffee farmers.

“Mild drought impacts on coffee production before the April-to-June harvest could be serendipitous, resulting in less leaf growth and more cherries,” a Bogota-based agent from the US Department of Agriculture said.

The US Department of Agriculture has highlighted recent ‘good weather’ (which, when referring to a period of near-drought, is rather strange to hear) and a dedicated replanting programme as to why their forecast is a positive one.

After suffering a severe outbreak of coffee rust in 2008, many farmers and cooperatives began uprooting and replanting their crop. And now, years down the line, those new plants are holding up well and bearing plenty of fruit.

Indeed the forecast is so positive that their prediction of 13.4m bags would be the largest harvest of Colombian coffee since the early 1990s.

It would also help cement Colombia as the world’s third-biggest producer of coffee, behind neighbour Brazil and Vietnam.

The Department of Agriculture’s bureau in Bogota did raise a few concerns though, mainly the rising cost of labour.

Over the past year we have seen many people leave rural areas; forgoing traditional jobs in the coffee sector to go and build highways as the Colombian government push forward with large-scale investments in the country’s infrastructure.

Speaking about this recruitment drive, coffee farmer Pedro Echavarria stated that this is “a very serious problem” for the industry as a whole.

However, the party line – so to speak – from parts of itself appears to be a slightly more cautious one. Officials and farmers from the country are believed to still be “cautious” about El Nino, with many expecting to see the weather pattern having a negative effect on coffee yields.