COLOMBIA COFFEE RECOVERY NOT TO OCCUR BEFORE 2012/13

摘要

Following 23 consecutive months of falling output on a year-to-year level Colombia's coffee industry had started to shown signs of a recovery from April 2010 onwards since when monthly production was above the corresponding year-ago levels up to March2011. But the industry went back into reverse gear from April last year as monthly production levels were lower than the year before consistently since then. Making matters worse, coffee production in December 2011 fell to as little as 726,000 60-kg bags - down 38% from 1.164 mln in the same month of 2010 and the lowest level for the month since 1971. The drop in output can be attributed to adverse weather conditions related to the La Nina weather pattern including excessive rainfall, reduced sunshineand lower temperatures, which resulted in limited flowering last year. Being three months into the new 2011/12 (Oct/Sep) season, cumulative output is down nearly 25% on the year at 2.227 mln bags compared with 2.950 mln in the first three months of 2010/11.