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Surveying the frost damage in Brazil in August 2021. Photo by Maja Wallengren.
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Maja Wallengren, global coffee reporter also known as SpillingTheBeans aka the "Indiana Jones of Coffee" and also origins contributing editor for STiR coffee and tea went to Brazil on a 10-day intensive visit travelling 2,600 km across the coffee regions most severely affected by the frost damage and covering an area that accounts for 65% of the annual Brazil harvest.
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Maja Wallengren, origins contributing editor for STiR coffee and tea, speaking to Brazilian coffee growers across the coffee regions most severely affected by the frost damage during a 10-day field trip in the first half of August.
Brazil and world faces minimum 10-12 million bag loss in 2022 harvest
Travelling over 2,500 kilometers overland through Brazil’s frost damaged coffee fields the utter devastation is so compounding to witness that it is hard to find words that adequately describe the situation. Overwhelming is the word that continues to find its way back to the conversation with Brazilian coffee growers spread out over an area hit by frost so extensive that it covers 65% of the total Brazil harvest in an average crop cycle.
Top government officials have confirmed to STiR coffee and tea in exclusive comments that Brazil’s Agriculture Ministry already is working with a preliminary figure of minimum 10-12 million 60-kilogram bags in frost losses to the next 2022 harvest, for which flowering will start between the end of September and early October. This figure is based on the percentage of area so severely affected that coffee production will not start to recover until the 2024 and 2025 crops, but it does not include the much larger area of coffee farms which will have to be renovated or replanted because of the uneven impact of damage by the frost.
“At my farm about 30% of the total area planted with coffee was badly affected which was a lot less than many growers I know, but because of the way the frost burned the trees and land in a very uneven way I will have to renovate at least 50% of the area,” said producer Dalcio Oliveira Guidett, a grower in the Serra Negra region of Sao Paulo state.
Such comments represent the vast majority of farmers as they are working through the initial damage evaluation. While smaller parts of frost affected areas can be renovated with less invasive pruning methods, the majority need either stumping, where the stem is cut just 8-10 cm from the root, or replanting, both of which cases will require 3-4 years before production will be back. And in case of replanting, this won’t be possible to start until the end of 2022 because of a lack of planting material.
The four cold fronts that brought the coldest weather to Brazil in over 30 years between the end of June and early August and caused the most damaging frost in close to 50 years were so severe the result ultimately will go down in the history books to be known as the “black frost of 2021” in Brazil. Unlike the “black frost” events that primarily hit the state of Parana in 1975 and 1978, the events of the 1970s were by majority isolated to Parana State and led to an estimated 90% of the state’s farmers abandon coffee production in the southernmost part of the Brazilian coffee belt. But the 2021 black frost hit Brazilian coffee producing areas from across Parana, Sao Paulo, Alta Mogiana, and the top Minas Gerais producing regions of Southern Minas and Cerrado Mineiro.
A “black frost” is a term coined by Brazilian agronomists that describes a particularly damaging frost where extended cold weather below -2 or -3 °C combined with the effects of winds and humidity causes not only leaves and branches to "burn" but also taps into the heart of the stem and sap of the coffee trees, leaving it either entirely killed or dead so close to the root that it has insufficient nutrients left to bounce back from pruning or stumping.
Driving through the normally beautiful, lush, and green coffee lands from Southern Minas through Alta Mogiana to Cerrado, vast areas of completely burned black and dark brown coffee farms dominate the landscape for over 800 kilometers. From Varginha, Alfenas, Nova Resende, Muzambinho, Juruaia, Guaxupe, Franca, Pedregulho, Araxa, and Patrocinio, the frost-stricken landscape just doesn’t stop.
“I lost everything, every single hectare of coffee planted was burned and I’ll be lucky if I can recover perhaps 5-10% with some pruning,” said Virginia Aguiar, her voice choking as she fights back tears at her Fazenda Semente in the Cerrado coffee region of Patrocinio. “I just don’t know what to do right now, I am thinking I might move away, that this is it for me with coffee,” she told STiR coffee and tea.
Farms across the Cerrado region of Patrocinio were among the very worst hit by the frost and preliminary figures point to massive losses of up to 60% here while the figure for all of Cerrado is estimated at between 25-30%. But with Cerrado producing the world's highest average yields of 55-60 bags per hectare in a big-harvest cycle, the negative and long-term impact on Brazilian production figure is much more significant.
In any given year Brazil produces between 30-50% of the entire coffee consumed around the world, and even though an overall loss of 10-15% might not sound like much, in the case of Brazil it makes up for as much as the entire coffee grown in Mexico and most of Central America combined. There is no other producing country or region in the world with even remotely close to the ability to make up for such a major shortfall in Brazil.
There is no quick fix for Brazilian farmers or the global coffee market for how to recover from the Black Frost of 2021 and the only thing that is certain is that Brazil will need an official 2022-2026 coffee recovery plan with full support and backup from the coffee industry as a whole if the supply-demand balance in the years ahead is to be sustained.
“Even the frost in 1994 did not come even close to the damage I had this time,” said coffee grower Joao Antonio Ribeiro, watching out over the full hectare of year-old trees all burned to beyond recovery. His voice shaking for a second, and then he offers a soft smile, adding: “The coffee farmer is brave, so we will start over and wait until the trees start producing coffee again.” Most of the Brazilian farmers will agree with this sentiment, but for the global market there is no such luxury of waiting as the world’s biggest producer and exporter just started running out of supply a lot faster than expected.
Maja Wallengren has been writing about coffee for more than 25 years from over 60 coffee producing countries across Southeast Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. She can be reached at coffee@octobermultimedia.com