Monday, June 01, 2015

Ethiopia to help East Africa to record coffee harvest

(Jun 31, 2015, (Agrimoney.com))--Ethiopia's coffee harvest is to hit a record high next season, helping the East Africa region to a record crop, and spurring expectations of the area's strongest exports in 20 years.

Ethiopia - the fifth-ranked coffee producer, where the crop is believed to have originated – will harvest 6.51m bags of all-arabica beans in 2015-16, the US Department of Agriculture bureau in Addis Ababa said.

While short of hopes of Ethiopia's government, which had hoped that output would hit 7.7m bags by 2014-15 as farmers improve on "quite low" yields of 0.7-0.8 tonnes per hectare, the harvest at this level would extend a long-term run of gentle increase.

Not since 2002-03 has the country seen a decline in output. The bureau said: "The quality of the coffee crop might deteriorate somewhat due to the delayed Belg rains," which occur around March and April, "and the timing/length of the Meher rains" which stretch from May to September. "However, at this stage, it is too early to tell what that overall impact on quality might be." Read more from Agrimoney.com »

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