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Scientists battle massive coffee rust outbreak in Central America

3 points by ananyob 14y ago

DanBC 14y ago
> the Institute of Coffee of Costa Rica estimates that the latest outbreak may halve the 2013–14 harvest in the worst affected areas of the nation. This outbreak is “the worst we’ve seen in Central America and Mexico since the rust arrived” in the region more than 40 years ago, says John Vandermeer, an ecologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who has received “reports of devastation in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Mexico”. Reduced supply should be great for the growers, right? They're going to get paid handsomely for this much smaller crop, because people really want coffee and there's plenty of margin near the consumer end to get squeezed to give the growers more money for this now-rarer item. Economists - where am I going wrong?
- tokenadult 14y ago
  Economists - where am I going wrong? I'm not an economist by occupation, but this looks like bad news for the growers in that region, because they have less to sell, but the price of coffee is influenced mostly by worldwide supply, which will not soon be influenced just by that regional fall in production. This is the same issue that my uncles who are farmers face. It would seem "logical" that if their production falls because of bad weather, they would make that up in higher price per bushel of grain, but the market price of their grain is very little influenced by the average yields per acre in their regions of the United States. From the article: "Colombia could be the closest to a solution. Marco Aurelio Cristancho, a researcher at Cenicafé, the National Centre for the Investigation of Coffee in Chinchiná, says that the government has supported research into developing resistant strains of coffee through crossbreeding. The introduction of resistant strains, together with improved weather monitoring to help predict rust outbreaks, has meant that fewer than 10% of plants now need to be treated with fungicide, down from 60% four years ago, Cristancho says. The government has also supported work on the genetics of both the fungus and the plant." So it is precisely that regional difference in severity of the worldwide problem of coffee rust that allows some producing regions with normal yields to keep the global price of coffee roughly steady even while other producing regions face severe reductions in yield.
  - sjg007 14y ago
    Also don't buy organic coffee..

3 points by ananyob 14y ago

DanBC 14y ago

> the Institute of Coffee of Costa Rica estimates that the latest outbreak may halve the 2013–14 harvest in the worst affected areas of the nation. This outbreak is “the worst we’ve seen in Central America and Mexico since the rust arrived” in the region more than 40 years ago, says John Vandermeer, an ecologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who has received “reports of devastation in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Mexico”. Reduced supply should be great for the growers, right? They're going to get paid handsomely for this much smaller crop, because people really want coffee and there's plenty of margin near the consumer end to get squeezed to give the growers more money for this now-rarer item. Economists - where am I going wrong?

tokenadult 14y ago
Economists - where am I going wrong? I'm not an economist by occupation, but this looks like bad news for the growers in that region, because they have less to sell, but the price of coffee is influenced mostly by worldwide supply, which will not soon be influenced just by that regional fall in production. This is the same issue that my uncles who are farmers face. It would seem "logical" that if their production falls because of bad weather, they would make that up in higher price per bushel of grain, but the market price of their grain is very little influenced by the average yields per acre in their regions of the United States. From the article: "Colombia could be the closest to a solution. Marco Aurelio Cristancho, a researcher at Cenicafé, the National Centre for the Investigation of Coffee in Chinchiná, says that the government has supported research into developing resistant strains of coffee through crossbreeding. The introduction of resistant strains, together with improved weather monitoring to help predict rust outbreaks, has meant that fewer than 10% of plants now need to be treated with fungicide, down from 60% four years ago, Cristancho says. The government has also supported work on the genetics of both the fungus and the plant." So it is precisely that regional difference in severity of the worldwide problem of coffee rust that allows some producing regions with normal yields to keep the global price of coffee roughly steady even while other producing regions face severe reductions in yield.
- sjg007 14y ago
  Also don't buy organic coffee..