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Central America Sees Impact to Coffee After Hurricane Julia

By: Alexis Rubinstein, Managing Editor - Coffee Network

 
Alexis Rubinstein
Managing Editor

CoffeeNetwork (New York) – Last week, Hurricane Julia touched down in Nicaragua before being downgraded to a tropical storm and bringing extreme weather to El Salvador, Guatemala and Costa Rica.

“The storm’s greater than expected wind speeds and torrential rain has raised the potential for damage to crops and property; including some coffee, sugarcane and a number of other crops,” Drew Lerner from World Weather Inc, said in a recent report.

“Because of this faster movement and stronger wind speeds there is a higher potential that more coffee cherries may have been knocked to the ground and there is potential for a little greater than expected small limb breakage.”

In an interview with CoffeeNetwork, a coffee farmer in Nicaragua tells us that “the damage caused by hurricane Julia was 112 fallen trees on the internal roads blocking the ways and the coffee plantations. Although it did not cause significant damage to the coffee plantations, we did lose about 30 coffee bags. We also experienced damage to the local school power lines and the farm's internal power lines,” he said.

Although he wished for his name not to be mentioned, he did tell CoffeeNetwork that his 230-hectare farm is located in El Tuma La Dalia, in the department of Matagalpa. For the new crop, it is estimated that they will produce 3,500 69-kg bags, an increase from the 3,000 bags produced in the previous crop.

“30% of our crop was affected by hurricanes Iota and Eta last year,” he said. While the farm has been struggling with adverse weather, fortunately, roya is no longer a major issue. “In the last couple of years, we have made a special focus on our soil's health, inoculating them with beneficial biological micro-organisms, which have come to impact the health of our coffee roots' plantations and nutrition,” he explained. “This program has allowed us to obtain coffee plantations with greater tolerance to diseases such as leaf rust, Mycenia citricolor, and especially antracnosis, allowing us to reduce the use of chemicals and giving us a better and healthier crop for our final consumers.”

In May, the USDA pegged Nicaragua’s 2022/23 coffee crop unchanged from the previous year at 2.7 million 60-kilogram bags.

El Salvador was also impacted by Hurricane Julia. Many reports coming out of the country note that while the trees were not damaged, the increased humidity brought about by the storm will increase the incidence of roya and other diseases. Prior to the hurricane, roya was already reported in around 15% of El Salvador’s coffee trees.

In Costa Rica, “it has been in the infrastructure of access roads to coffee-growing areas, bridges and roads, mainly in the Coto Brus region which have been affected,” Xenia Chaves, the executive director of the Costa Rica Coffee Institute told CoffeeNetwork. “We still do not have a report of direct impact on the harvest because we have just started the collection process.”

CoffeeNetwork will continue to report on more information as it becomes available.

Alexis Rubinstein

 

  • Coffee

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