Brazilian coffee farmers were able to speed up harvesting in recent days, helped by dry weather in most coffee producing regions, consultancy Safras & Mercado said on Thursday. Farmers had harvested 61 percent of the country's fields by July 17, according to a weekly report from Safras. That is still less than the 65 percent harvest during the same period in 2017 and the 64 percent average for the past five years. But the difference had been larger earlier in the current crop.
Given its estimate for a total crop of 60.5 million 60-kg (132-lb) bags this year, Safras said coffee producers had harvested 36.91 million bags of coffee as of Tuesday. Gil Barabach, the consultancy's coffee analyst, said the lack of recent rain in particular helped the harvest of the robusta crop, which had a larger delay compared to the arabica crop. Robusta harvest reached 86 percent of the area versus 93 percent last year and 96 percent of 5-year average, Barabach said.