Falling Renovation Of Colombia’s Coffee Plantations To Affect Output Ahead of El Niño
Falling Renovation Of Colombia’s Coffee Plantations To Affect Output Ahead of El Niño
Bogota (Coffee Network) - History has proven that a strong dry spell could boost coffee production in Colombia as it did in 2015 when El Niño last hit this Andean nation, but the difference between those years and now is that coffee plantations were yielding high output thanks to a vast renovation program, which is not happening now.
Colombia’s coffee output in 2015 was 14.175 million bags of 60-kg, and 14.23 million bags in 2016, up from 12.14 million bags of 60 in 2014 largely thanks to the dry spell that occurred in 2015, but the higher-yielding rates were also associated to a renovation program that began in 2010.
In 2010, about a third of Colombia's coffee hectares was affected by roya, prompting growers to cut trees and replant with resistant varietals. Colombia replanted 451,000 hectares of old trees with new ones from 2006 through September 2011 and about 390,000 hectares were renovated between 2012 and 2015.
This largely explains why new coffee plantations yielded higher output in 2015 and 2016.
But the difference between El Niño now is that renovation has been reduced, which implies that coffee plants will be weak to withstand El Niño, other coffee growers and analysts said.
“Coffee plants like the sun. The water stress associated to the El Niño will propel production in 2023 and 2024,” said coffee analyst and growers Guillermo Trujillo.
A preliminary 33,716 hectares were renovated in Colombia by planting new coffee trees and using the zoca method in January-September 2022, down from 66,510 hectares in 2021, but lower than the 72,850 hectares in 2017 and lower than the 82,200 hectares in 2018, according to historic balances submitted by the former general manager of the coffee grower federation to growers during the national coffee summit.
More relevant information showed that 12,206 hectares of coffee by planting a new tree were renovated in January-September 2022, down from 18,196 hectares in the full 2021 year, but higher than the 11,666 hectares in 2020. In addition, a renovation implementing the zoca technique, in which the tree is cut at an approximate height of 30 cm above the floor, totaled 21,510 hectares in January September 2022, down from 48,314 hectares in the full year 2021 and down from 41,080 hectares in 2020, reads the most recent information on renovation provided by the balance of coffee growers.
This drop in renovation partially explains why the productivity per hectare dropped to 17.07 bags per hectare in January-September 2022, down from 19.32 bags per hectare in 2021 and sharply lower than the 20.5 bags per hectare in 2019.
The average age of coffee plantations in Colombia stood at 6.89 years in 2022, up from 6.79 years but lower than the 7.1 years in 2017,according to historic information from FNC.
Colombia has 844,400 hectares of coffee and it must renew at least 10 percent of those hectares, to preserve the age of coffee growing. Renovation is an essential agronomic practice so that coffee plantations remain highly productive and therefore coffee growers can improve their profitability. In, Colombia varietals resistant to pests stood at 85.82 % of total coffee plantations, up from 71.6% in 2017.
El Niño
Expectations of strong droughts in Colombia later this year have led some of the country's coffee growers and exporters cut their production estimates for the coffee year 2022-2023- and 2023-2024.
The El Nino weather phenomena is producing high temperatures across the country, and the tendency is expected to worsen into June onwards when it will begin to consolidate, the country’s weather office Ideam said.
Coffee growers in Colombia, the world’s third-largest coffee grower, are on tenterhooks ahead of expected stronger droughts.
After experiencing La Niña for three consecutive years with torrential rains across this Andean nation, Ideam has said El Niño most likely will begin to hit towards the end of June, and it will consolidate in late 2023.
Pedro Echavarria, a large coffee grower in the Antioquia province, said the arrival of El Niño could deteriorate the 2023-2024 harvest because this intense and unforeseen dry spell affects both the October harvest, which is just beginning to fill up, and the Mitaca, which should register flowerings in September.
Echavarria says the current harvest 2022/23 will total approximately 10 million bags of 60-kg and the next 23/24 may be even lower depending on the "El Niño”.
“Water stress is necessary for flowering but not in excess that causes El Niño to limit the "filling" of the grain -like the ravages of Brazil-. Also, fertilization has been tremendously reduced as well as renewal of plantations. And that is happening not only in Colombia but also throughout the world, especially in countries that grow Arabica,” he said.
By Diana Delgado
