Coffee in Brazil to Get Regular Rain for Flowering, Boosting 2011 Harvest

Coffee crops in Brazil, the world’s largest producer, are expected to get regular rainfall in the September flowering period, helping diminish a cyclical decline in production next year, a government forecaster said.

Showers in the Center West and Southeast regions are forecast to start in the second half of September, the best time for rain to stimulate the flowering of coffee trees, said Expedito Rebello, head of research at the government’s Meteorology Institute, known as Inmet.

“Coffee beans may improve flowering as rains tend to be more regular,” Rebello said yesterday in a telephone interview from Brasilia. “The weather is very favorable for coffee.”

Excess rainfall last year prompted trees to flower at different times, before or after the adequate period, Rebello said. La Nina, as the cyclical cooling of the equatorial Pacific waters is known, will reduce rain in Brazil’s largest coffee producing regions and allow better flowering this year, Rebello said.

Output will rise this year, even after the irregular flowering, because trees entered the better-yielding half of a two-year cycle. Brazil will harvest 47 million 60-kilogram (132- pound) coffee bags this year, up from 39.5 million bags last year, the Agriculture Ministry said on May 6.

The ministry will release its first estimate for next year’s April-September harvest on Jan. 6.

Less rainfall than last year in the South of Brazil, the country’s second-biggest soybean-producing region, will also help planting of the oilseed starting in October, Rebello said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Katia Cortes in Brasilia at at kcortes@bloomberg.net

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