Poor Farmer

By Heather Walsh Bloomberg November 04, 2011 Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Coffee stockpiles may remain near 11- year lows into next year as Colombia’s Arabica harvest fails to meet forecasts, contributing to a “scarcity” of the bean favored by brewers including Starbucks Corp. Colombia’s year-end coffee crop is falling below “expected volumes” amid “strong” global demand for coffee, said Jorge Vasquez, chairman of Colombia’s National Association of Coffee Exporters, in an interview yesterday in Cartagena, Colombia. “There is a scarcity of coffee worldwide,” he said. In Colombia “you haven’t seen the expected volumes.” Colombia, the second-largest grower of Arabica coffee beans after Brazil, will produce its smallest crop in two years in 2011 after above-average rainfall damaged plants, according to Vasquez. The harvest will likely slide to as low as 8.5 million bags this year, from last year’s 8.9 million bags, he said. Arabica-coffee futures for December delivery ...

By Isis Almeida Bloomberg November 04, 2011 Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) -- The premium buyers are prepared to pay to obtain fine cup coffee beans from top global producer Brazil widened over the past week as sellers held back beans, according to Rio de Janeiro-based broker Flavour Coffee. Fine cup beans were selling at a premium of 5 cents a pound over ICE Futures U.S. in New York in the past week, compared with a premium of 3 cents a pound a week ago, the broker said in a report e-mailed yesterday. Good cup beans, which are a lower quality, were selling at a discount of 10 cents a pound, unchanged from last week. “Producers were not eager sellers,” Flavour said in the report. “Differentials continue tightening up,” according to the report, which referred to the premium or discount paid to get beans in Brazil’s physical coffee market. Brazilian producers still have to sell 10 percent to 15 percent of the 2011-12 crop started in July, Thiago Cazarini, a broker at Varginha...