Brazil's No 1 robusta co-operative expects to harvest a bigger crop in 2006 due to regular rain and improved crop care, but quality is likely to suffer due to numerous flowerings and disease.
Cooabriel, located in the north of Espirito Santo state, is likely to harvest 30 percent more coffee if rainfall stays favourable between January and March as coffee cherries mature.
In calendar 2005, Cooabriel expects to receive around 250,000 60-kg bags from its 2,000 members, up 25 percent from the 201,492 received in 2004. Robusta output in Brazil, the world's second biggest robusta grower after Vietnam, is officially estimated at 9.1 million bags in 2005/06 (July-June).
"The first flowering was in July, which was very early and caused by unseasonable rain," Cooabriel president Antonio Joaquim de Souza Neto told Reuters.
"We've had three flowerings so far, which means the crop will mature unevenly and it will be difficult to decide when to start harvesting."
Sao Gabriel de Palha had 257 millimeters of rain in May and June, which delayed harvesting and damaged crop quality. In the first 10 months of 2005, Sao Gabriel had 1,164 mm of rain, almost as much as the annual average.
Uneven crop development harms quality because pickers gather immature green cherries, ripe red ones and over-ripe black cherries all together because they are paid by quantity only.
Fast pickers can fill 10 bags of 60-kg with coffee cherries each day, for which they are paid 50 reais ($23), and they can earn about 1,100 reais a month during the three-months harvest. Brazil's minimum monthly wage is 300 reais ($138).
"Labourers sometimes refuse to pick sections of the plantations where there is good quality but little coffee," Souza Neto said, adding that it was difficult to compete with wages offered by the local textile and timber industries.
"Labour is a big problem."
Local farmers are planting more eucalyptus trees, which require little labour and are much cheaper to harvest. They are a source of fuel for drying coffee and help meet environmental laws requiring 20 percent of farmland to be covered with forest.