Honduras, Central America’s largest coffee producer, is facing an outbreak of leaf rust – one of the world’s most destructive coffee diseases – that some fear could dent the 6.1 million 60-kilogram bags due for export in the 2012/2013 harvest.

The disease, a fungus known locally as roya, kills coffee leaves by sapping them of nutrients and lowering bean yields. It currently blights around 10 percent of the planted crop, Mario Ordonez, the technical director of the national coffee institute IHCAFE, told Reuters.

Authorities are trying to contain the outbreak, sending fungicides and fertilizers to the roughly 20,000 growers in the 15 affected states, and distributing technical information on how to protect plantations against further damage, Ordonez said.
Nonetheless, Ordonez did not foresee the 2012/13 export figures, recently seen at 6.1 million bags, being threatened by the roya outbreak.

“We know there will be some effect on coffee production, but we think exports won’t fall because we have new plots, planted within the last three years, that should bolster next year’s harvest,” said Ordonez.

But others felt he was being overly optimistic.

“It’s almost certain that because of the roya outbreak, exports won’t reach the expected 6.1 million 60-kilogram bags,” said Rodolfo Penalba, the head of Cafe Organico Marcala, a Honduran coffee exporting company.

“There are farms where they have thrown away all the leaves and the poorer producers don’t have money to buy fungicides.”
Ordonez blamed the outbreak on a number of factors.

“This has been an atypical year,” he said. “We’re seeing higher-than-usual roya infection levels as a result of extreme weather and a slackening of growers’ prevention efforts.”

Honduras recently overtook Guatemala as Central America’s biggest coffee producer as high prices sparked a coffee-growing boom.

Prices of ICE December arabica coffee futures jumped nearly 200 percent between December 2008 and mid-2011, although they have since retreated to more modest levels, as falling demand led roasters to use cheaper blends.

On Friday, the benchmark December contract traded around $1.80 per lb, down from highs of more than $3.00 in 2011.

Unlike Brazil, the world’s top coffee producer which mainly grows robusta coffee beans, Honduras, like the rest of Central America and Mexico, mostly produces arabica beans, considered to be of higher quality.

In the first 11-months of the 2011/2012 cycle, Honduras exported 5.4 million 60-kilogram bags, up nearly 40 percent on the same period during the 2010/11 harvest.

The coffee season in Mexico and Central America, which together produce more than one-fifth of the world’s arabica beans, runs from October through September.

Source: BRecorder.com