Poor Farmer

By Isis Almeida Bloomberg Businessweek September 04, 2012 Global coffee production for the season ending this month will be higher than first estimated as output expands in Vietnam, the biggest grower of robusta beans, according to the International Coffee Organization. World production will total 132.7 million bags for the 2011-12 season, the London-based group said in a report e-mailed today. That compares with last month’s 131.4 million-bag forecast and 134.3 million bags a year earlier. “This revision is mostly attributable to better-than- expected levels of production in Vietnam, which is now estimated at 21 million bags, up 7.9 percent,” the ICO said. Each bag weighs 60 kilograms (132 pounds). Production of robusta, used in instant coffee and espresso, will rise to 51.5 million bags from 49 million bags a year earlier, the ICO estimated. That will boost the variety’s share of global output to almost 39 percent from 36.5 percent a year earlier, according to...

By Yi Tian and Isis Almeida Bloomberg Businessweek September 04, 2012 Arabica coffee climbed for a second session in New York on signs of limited supply from Brazil, the world’s largest producer. Cocoa and sugar slid. Farmers in Brazil are hoarding part of their production to wait for price increases, the National Coffee Council said in a report last week. The price has dropped 27 percent this year on forecasts for a bigger harvest in Brazil. “Brazilian offers remain light,” Jack Scoville, a vice president for Price Futures Group in Chicago, said today in a report. “Farmers there are not offering much, and are offering lower qualities when they offer at all.” Arabica coffee for December delivery rose 0.3 percent to close at $1.653 a pound at 1:46 p.m. on ICE Futures U.S. in New York. Earlier, the price climbed as much as 1.9 percent. Hedge funds and other large speculators held the biggest coffee net-short position, or bets on prices declines, since May 200...