Brazil's 2017 coffee harvest is advancing despite widespread rains in producing regions lately, Safras & Mercado analysts said in a report on Friday. Safras said the harvest of both arabica and robusta coffee had reached 11 percent of total area under cultivation by May 16, compared with 10 percent a year earlier and the five-year average of 9 percent for that time of year.
Safras analyst Gil Barabach said rains were not enough to slow the work much. Initial volumes from the areas producing robusta confirm a recovery in the production of this type of coffee from last year, he added. Brazil's instant coffee industry struggled to source robusta beans in the first half of this year because stocks were low after droughts in the last two seasons. Agricultural information think-tank Cepea/Esalq said this week that some producers were coping well with rains and were in no rush to speed up the harvest since they expect prices to improve a bit.
The devaluation of the local currency after the latest scandal in Brazilian politics this week improved local prices in reais, but producers were still reluctant to sell. "Farmers see the political development, the currency weakening, and they wait to see if there would be further losses that might increase local prices in reais," said Minas Gerais coffee trader Thiago Cazarini. "The market is very slow." Safras said that considering its estimate for a Brazilian coffee crop of 51.1 million bags this year, the harvest so far resulted in roughly 5.5 million bags of new-crop beans.