Brazil's 2014 coffee harvest is between 35 and 40 percent complete, the president of the country's National Coffee Council said on Thursday, citing reports from member cooperatives. The Council is maintaining its forecast, last revised in April, for a coffee crop of 40.1 million to 43.3 million 60-kilogram bags after severe drought hit coffee-producing areas in the world's top producer in January and February, Silas Brasileiro told Reuters.
That would be less than the 49.2 million bags the government says were harvested last season. Cooxupe, the world's largest coffee cooperative, said on Wednesday its members had harvested 27.5 percent of their expected crop, well beyond the 13.6 percent that had been collected at the same time a year earlier. Brasileiro did not give a comparative harvest progress report for a year ago. Lack of rain accelerates the maturation of coffee beans, giving farmers an early start to harvesting.
Though some individual cooperatives have reported increasing damage due to an outbreak of the coffee borer beetle, Brasileiro said the impact on this year's crop "was not yet significant." Brazil's government is no longer allowing farmers to use a product known as endolsulfan to prevent crop damage and has been slow to make alternatives with the active ingredient cyantraniliprole available, Brasileiro said.
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