El Nino raises 1998 coffee crop concerns

El Nino raises 1998 coffee crop concerns

SINGAPORE (Reuter): A dry spell, believed to have been triggered by the El Nino weather pattern, is beginning to bite on Indonesian coffee farms and may disrupt the current tree flowering for next year's crop, traders said yesterday.

"It's very dry, much drier than is normally the case this time of the year. The effects of El Nino are starting to hit. If you don't have any rains and the coffee trees are flowering, it may affect production," a veteran coffee dealer told Reuters.

Another dealer said several Indonesian coffee farms "have got emergency irrigation. But this dry spell is going to do some harm somewhere."

El Nino, named after the Christ child by Peruvian fishermen to describe the phenomenon of unusually warm Pacific Ocean temperatures off the coast of South America, normally peaks around December and can affect weather patterns worldwide.

Meteorologists have warned this year's El Nino may have arrived early and could match the century's worst in 1982-1983, which blighted crops in Indonesia, Australia, the Philippines and southern Africa after a blistering drought.

Floods ravaged India, Peru and Chile, severe winter storms pounded California and record snowfalls piled up in the Rocky Mountains of North America.

One trader said next year's possible fall in coffee output in Indonesia, the world's third leading coffee producer behind Brazil and Colombia, may be even more drastic than the 20-25 percent drop expected for the 1997 crop.

"The fall in Indonesia's production next season may even be more severe because of this El Nino," he said.

Indonesia is the world's largest producer of the robusta grade of coffee and its harvest runs between April and September.

Robusta coffee is more bitter in taste than higher grade arabica coffee, which is predominantly grown in Central and South America, but also in East Africa and India.