Poor Farmer

"Coffee prices will likely rise next year due to global supply shortages" By Katia Cortes Bloomberg December 22, 2010 Coffee production in Brazil, the world’s biggest grower, may drop to the lowest in four years in 2011, pushing up prices as trees enter the lower-yielding half of a two-year cycle, Agriculture Minister Wagner Rossi said. Growers will harvest 37 million bags, down 23 percent from 48.1 million bags estimated for this year, Rossi said in an interview in Brasilia today. Coffee prices will likely rise next year as global demand outpaces supplies amid declining stockpiles, he said. “Prices will likely remain on a steady rise,” Rossi, 67, said at his office. “World demand is firm and global stockpiles are low.” Coffee, which has surged 72 percent this year, extended a rally to a 13-year high earlier today on concern adverse weather in Brazil and India will pare global supplies. Arabica coffee for March delivery reached $2.4225, the highest since June 19...

By Claudia Carpenter Bloomberg December 19, 2010 Arabica coffee prices after last week’s jump to a 13-year high may be set for a “straight up vertical spike” to a record $4 a pound with daily gains of 50 cents a pound, researcher Shawn Hackett said in a report. Coffee is no longer a “value commodity” and roasters are facing a “panic stricken demand rationing orgy,” Hackett, president of Hackett Financial Advisors Inc. in Boynton Beach, Florida, wrote in a report e-mailed yesterday. Rains in Latin America will likely keep production from exceeding output for the last two years, he wrote. Coffee futures in New York on Dec. 17 jumped to the 13-year high of $2.267 a pound. Rice, cocoa, lumber, milk and natural gas are commodities that still have “pockets of value,” according to Hackett. --- To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter at ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net

A coffee producer weighs beans at a Costa Rican plantation. (Photo: Reuters via WSJ)   By Leslie Josephs Wall Street Journal December 16, 2010 NEW YORK—The exchange that oversees the world's most actively traded coffee futures has answered a wake-up call. Responding to a growing buzz that its stockpiles of arabica coffee include beans far past their prime, IntercontinentalExchange Inc. last week said it will for the first time prohibit beans too old to make good coffee from being delivered against the contract. Coffee stockpiles have dwindled as bad weather has slashed consecutive harvests in some countries in Central America, as well as in Colombia, the world's largest producer of the prized, mild-washed arabica beans. ICE's stockpile of certified coffee has plunged 44% since the start of the year The ICE announced last week that it will include arabica beans from Brazil, the world's top coffee producer, on the list of coffees that can be delivered against the...