1Million Bags of Coffee In Central America Suffer Damage From Storms - 25/10/2011
SPECIAL REPORT
1 Million Bags Coffee In Central America Suffer Damage From Storms
By Maja Wallengren
MEXICO CITY, Oct. 20 (CoffeeNetwork) -- Coffee regions across Central America have suffered extensive infrastructure damage and crop losses are already being reported after more than one week of non-stop torrential rains have hit the region. Initial reports indicate that up to 1 million 60-kilogram bags of 2011-12 crop coffee has suffered varying degrees of damage, local producer and industry officials said Thursday.
The rains that have hit Southern Mexico and Central America started on October 10th and come from no less than five tropical storms including two hurricanes. After 10 days non-stop down-pouring the rains have caused massive flooding, hundreds of mudslides and countless flash-floods from rivers braking their banks and which to date have killed at least 113 people and affected over 2 million in areas that are primarily known as key coffee producing areas.
While actual mudslides in farms are few and not reported at any significant size, multiple cases of fallen cherries and outbreaks of “ojo de gallo” and rust fungus diseases are being reported, while infrastructure both at farms and all the key access roads needed to get the new crop out has sustained major damage.
“We have had reports from farms where cherries have fallen to the ground and we are already seeing a lot of problems with Ojo de Gallo breaking out, attacking both the foliage and the beans,” said Felipe Pascual, a coffee agronomist in Guatemala’s key northern Huehuetenango department.
“The damage is very heavy and the harvesting has just started. We will still have to make a thorough evaluation but that there is damage is not a question, the only question is how much and the situation is ugly,” said Juan Jose Osorto, former general manager of Honduras’ National Coffee Institute, Ihcafe.
Among the areas worst hit by the pondering rains are coffee growing regions accounting for 83 percent of the crop in El Salvador, about 40 percent of the crop in Honduras, about 60 percent of the crop in Guatemala, and smaller regions accounting for some 20 percent in Nicaragua and 10 percent of Costa Rica’s crop.
These are regions that in an average crop cycle would account for between 5 million and 6 million 60-kilogram bags of coffee and while industry officials in the countries say actual known crop losses at this point are small, up to 1 million bags are easily seen suffering varying degrees of damage.
At a time with continuing crop uncertainty in Colombia, and Brazilian exporters already have shipped most of a smaller 2011-12 crop, this latest climate-provoked toll to the world’s top quality Arabica bean supply adds serious tightness to a market already in a precarious state of deficit.
The official figures so far are small. Guatemala’s National Coffee Association, Anacafe, said that some 5,000 bags are known to have been lost in new crop, while El Salvador’s Coffee Research Foundation, Procafe, said about 11,500 bags were lost.
But both organizations also stressed that while this may seem insignificant, agronomists have yet to be able to make it into the coffee regions in order to investigate the situation and as long as the rains continue this has not been possible, while the infrastructure damage will complicate and delay this investigation.
MATERIAL DAMAGE WORSE THAN MITCH
Official authorities say the material damage in many areas of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are much worse than what the countries experienced during Hurricane Stan in 2005 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998, storms that hit the region particularly hard.
The presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua have all declared a state of emergency and appealed for international aid and support.
“El Salvador is suffering one of the most dramatic disasters in its history. An important percentage of the bean, corn and coffee crops have been lost as have large areas of cultivated land,” said El Salvador’s President Mauricio Funes.
By Wednesday evening 51,673 people had been evacuated in El Salvador where 32 people have died in the last week and “about 1 million people are suffering the impact of this directly,” said Funes. Over 10 percent of the country was under water and 181 of the country’s 262 municipalities are affected.
The Procafe research foundation postponed its National Coffee Celebration Day to Nov. 4th from the original day of Oct. 21st “due to the uncertainty about the climatic conditions” and complications from infrastructure damage.
The trigger storm known as Depression 12-E has alone in El Salvador caused over 1,500 millimeters of rainfall in the last nine days and compares to a historic average for the whole month of October of 207 millimeters, said El Salvador’s National Service for Territorial Studies, SNET.
In the week of Oct. 10-17 alone rainfall reached 1,256 millimeters in El Salvador, almost 50 percent more than in the week up to Mitch when 861 mm were registered, and compares to 766 millimeters in the week of Stan in 2005 and 483 millimeters in the week of Hurricane Ida, from which Salvadoran coffee growers lost about 100,000 bags of coffee.
The worst hit regions in El Salvador where rains started since Oct. 10 include Santa Ana, Sonsonate, Ahuachapan, La Libertad, San Salvador, La Paz, Usulutan and San Vicente, all coffee producing regions that combined accounted for 83 percent of the Salvadoran crop in the last 2010-11 harvest, according to Procafe figures.
CENTRAL AMERICA COFFE RECOVERY SUFFERS MAJOR SET-BACK
Coffee exporters and local producer officials in El Salvador said they expect a conservative forecast will be for the country to lose 10 percent of the 2011-12 crop which is pegged to produce 1.41 million bags. In Guatemala and Honduras industry officials say between 20 percent and 30 percent of the crop could be lost in the worst hit lower altitude regions where the cherries were in their final stages of maturation and particularly vulnerable to be thrown to the ground by the heavy rains. This could amount to losses of between 5-10 percent of the crop, depending on how severe the final cherry drop and fungus will be.
In Guatemala, so far 524,480 people are affected and 38 have died, while almost 30,000 had been evacuated by Thursday morning, according the country’s National Disaster Reduction Coordination Office, Conred. Most of the dead were in mudslides in the coffee departments of Copan, Santa Rosa, Chimaltenango, Quetzaltenango, Solola and Huehuetenango. Guatemala’s Agriculture Ministry said over 6,000 hectares of crops were destroyed. All departments have been hit with massive damage and tens of bridges and roads are reported collapsed, but the flooding has been so extensive in Guatemala that transportation and communication to many areas remain cut off.
In Honduras, the disaster prevention authority Copeco said 329,000 people are affected, 15 have died and some 11,000 have been evacuated while 8,000 hectares of crops are destroyed. A total of 66 roads have been affected of which 34 have sustained severe damage, while 23 bridges have been hit, including 7 completely destroyed and 8 severely damaged.
Of the country’s 18 provinces 16 are hit and the most affected areas in Honduras include El Paraiso, Choluteca, Comayagua, La Paz, Lempira, Ocotepeque, Copan, Santa Barbara, Cortes, Atlantida y Colon, most of them well known coffee regions.
According to Osorto, the regions of Choluteca, Lempira, Paraiso and Macala, located along the borders with Nicaragua and El Salvador, alone account for over 30 percent ofHonduras’ coffee production and “in all these regions the damage has been very severe,” he said.
In Nicaragua the most affected coffee areas are Nueva Segovia and Esteli and parts of Matagalpa and Jinotega, while in Costa Rica parts of the Central Valley and Tarrazu also are reporting effects from the rains, mostly in outbreak of fungus diseases and infrastructure damage. But the damage in both Nicaragua and Costa Rica is at this point believed to be much less severe than in the rest of Central America.
There is no doubt that the market and the industry as a whole will still have to wait many weeks, if not several months, before the final damage count will be known. But what is clear is that at a time with so many supply problems in the arabica world this latest natural disaster in Central America means that once again hopes of getting this region back on track and recover output to the production levels seen a decade ago has yet again been set back a few years.
--By Maja Wallengren, for CoffeeNetwork; mwallengren@hotmail.com
Article added: Wednesday, 26th October 2011