DJ Colombia 2009-10 Coffee Harvest To Reach Max 8M Bags

By Maja Wallengren Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Colombia’s 2009-10 coffee harvest, plagued by pests and bad weather, will struggle to match the last harvest’s 7.8 million 60-kilogram bags, already one of the smallest in over 30 years, a senior industry analyst said Tuesday.

The latest forecast from veteran commodity analyst Judith Ganes-Chase, who runs J. Ganes Consulting, follows the release of official statistics for Colombian coffee production, which showed output in January fell 41% to 515,000 bags.

“This is even lower than I thought. There is no way October to September output will be even 8.0 million bags with these figures,” Ganes-Chase told Dow Jones Newswires. Colombia’s harvest for the 2009 calendar year ended down 32% at 7.8 million bags.

The failure of crop recovery in Colombia, the world’s largest producer of top quality beans known as mild washed arabica coffee, has contributed to an ongoing shortage of premium coffee in world markets. This has forced U.S. roasters to cut back on blends containing
100% Colombian beans.

Ganes-Chase said total production will be sharply lower if output fails to recover in the mid-harvest, the second and last of the country’s two annual crops included in the 2009-10 crop cycle.

Harvesting of the mid-crop, also known as the mitaca, normally starts between the end of March and early April. Colombian producers have reported that despite a good flowering, yields are poor because of insufficient rainfall.

“If the mitaca is just as light as last year due to drought, as farmers fear, then October-September 2009-10 could be as low as 6.8-7.0 million bags,” said Ganes-Chase.

Until the last two years, Colombia was the world’s third-largest producer, after Brazil and Vietnam, with annual output of between 11.5 million and 12.5 million bags. Now Indonesia has taken over the spot as the No. 3 grower.