Source: CCTV News Client
Brazil is the world's largest producer and exporter of coffee and is known as the "Coffee Country". Affected by multiple extreme weather and other factors, in recent years, Brazil's coffee production has decreased, resulting in an increase in the price of international coffee market, and coffee growers have also fallen into multiple difficulties.
In Brazil, coffee is mainly produced in the three states of Minas Gerais, Paraná and São Paulo, and the small town of Cacondi is the largest coffee-growing region in the southern Brazilian state of São Paulo.
Adma is a coffee grower in Kakondi with 90 hectares of coffee fields. When we arrived in Kakodi in March 2022, he was worried about the year's output from his coffee plantation.
Coffee grower Adema Pereira: because of the arid weather, there is nothing on the branches, there is a lack of rain during the flowering season, and despite the flowering, it does not bear fruit.
April to September in Brazil is usually the dry season, but in recent years, drought conditions have often lasted until November, which affects the coffee flowering season from August to October and also causes the timing of coffee fruiting to be abnormal.
Ni Tianying: The one he just gave me is the coffee fruit that should bear on the coffee tree, and all coffee trees should bear this kind of coffee beans in this season, but we see that these trees around are basically in a state of no harvest.
In March 2023, we came to Kakondi again to visit the coffee fields of Adma. The probability and number of results on the coffee tree have increased significantly this year compared to last year, but the impact of climate on coffee cultivation can still be seen.
Ni Tianying, reporter of the main station: The white flowers on this coffee branch in my hand should normally only open in September, but now it is only March, and it has already opened. And the coffee tree next to me can be seen to be significantly smaller than the other coffee trees. This is actually the replanting of coffee trees that died due to frost during the frost season, and Adema told us that signs like this indicate that Brazil's climate is unusual.
Extreme weather such as drought, frost and cold have had a huge impact on coffee cultivation. More than 2,300 households in Kakundi grow coffee, which is their main source of income.
Adma said his coffee harvest for the whole of 2022 was 800 bags and he expects to harvest 900 bags in 2023, but that still depends on unknown weather.
To this end, agrometeorologists say that in recent years, the frequent alternation of La Niña and El Niño has mainly affected rainfall in the south, north and northeast of Brazil, resulting in extreme weather such as frost and hail, causing irreversible damage to crops.
Cleverson Freitas, agrometeorologist at Brazil's National Institute of Meteorology: In fact, in the last two years we have observed very severe frosts in these coffee-growing areas, which really harms crops, especially during the winter months. Another factor affecting coffee plantations is hail, which occurs mainly in the southern region of Minas Gerais and parts of São Paulo State, which can damage crops and lead to a decrease in yields.
According to the survey report of the National Commodity Supply Company, a subsidiary of Brazil's Ministry of Agriculture, the harvest of the big year of coffee production in Brazil in 2022 increased by only 3.1% compared with the small year of 2021, while the output of the previous 10 years can be different by 35%, which reflects the cycle reversal of coffee production and large and small years.