The Brazilian government has admitted that its statistics on coffee yields have been problematic in recent years and need to be improved to reflect reality better. The estimates were smaller than the number of exports plus the sum of local consumption.
Conab, Brazil’s food supply and statistics agency, has had problems monitoring Brazil’s coffee harvest, an issue that concerns many traders.
Compared to various trading houses and market analysts, Conab’s projections for coffee yields are lower. For this year, “Conab sees the crop at 50.4 million 60-kg bags, whereas the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) expects 64.3 million, Rabobank sees 63.2 million and consultancy Safras & Mercado, 58.2 million bags.”
Sergio de Zen, the director of agricultural policy at Conab, said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday that the agency has already initiated a revision of the figures and methodology for its coffee crop forecasts because of these discrepancies.
We’ve been talking to co-ops, farmers and exporters, trying to work together to be able to have a crop projection that better reflects the reality.
Sergio de Zen
When the statistics for local consumption and exports are compared with crop forecasts for the last five years, there is a large deficit of more than 32 million bags. The stock figures could help solve the problems, but Conab has stopped publishing these figures because of the illogical calculation of the supply balance.
The director blamed the current government for the mess and said Conab’s structure had been poor. To address the problem, the agency has started to hire staff and will use satellite data to better map cultivated areas and improve calculations of agricultural yields.
