Tuesday, December 11, 2012

It's all so confusing: A day after Smithsonian.com told us that CO2 might wipe out our coffee supply, Bloomberg News tells us about record coffee harvests, "abundant supply", and a "global glut"

Record Brazil coffee crop adds to global glut of arabica beans
Record coffee harvests in Brazil, the biggest grower, are compounding a global glut of arabica used by Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts.

Brazilian farmers will reap 50.8 million bags in 2013, a record for a so-called low-crop season, according to the median of nine analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The harvest reached 55.9 million 132-pound bags in 2012, an all-time high for a peak year. Output usually drops in alternate years because of growing cycles.
...
"There's a significant crop coming from Brazil if the weather continues to be favorable," said Claudio Oliveira, the head of trading at Castlestone Management LLC in New York, which manages about $500 million of assets. "Abundant supply is the driving force in the market."
...
Brazil had record harvests in two of the past three seasons, almost doubling output in about a decade and now accounting for 38 percent of global supply, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show. About 72 percent of the country's crop was arabica this year and the rest robusta, typically used in espressos.
Start Hoarding Your Beans, Thanks to Climate Change, $7 Coffee May Be the Norm | Smithsonian.com
a study from the Royal Botanic Gardens in the U.K. and the Environment Coffee Forest Forum in Ethiopia warned that up to 70 percent of the world’s coffee supply could be gone by 2080 due to climate change.

No comments: