Indonesian coffee output down 24% due to El Nino

JAKARTA (JP): A prolonged dry spell, believed to have been triggered by the El Nino weather phenomenon, is blamed for a 24 percent drop in the country's coffee output for the production year ending on Sept. 30.

The director of Jember, East Java-based Indonesian Coffee and Cocoa Research Center, Oskari Atmawinata, said on Tuesday that local production fell to 5.7 million 60-kilogram bags (342,000 metric tons) from the usual annual output of 450,000 tons.

It was due to the "severe drought in June-December period last year which has damaged coffee crops", Antara news agency quoted him as saying on the sidelines of a symposium on coffee in Surabaya, East Java.

Excessive rainfall during the June-November flowering period damaged plants and young pods while a dry spell from January to March damaged the developing seeds, he said.

El Nino is caused by a warming of the Pacific Ocean which interacts with other weather systems and typically produces freak weather patterns, such as drought in some areas and heavier than normal rainfall in others.

The phenomenon, which occurs every two to seven years, has unleashed natural disasters around the world, damaging crops for two successive years and causing turmoil on world commodities markets.

Indonesia is the world's third largest coffee producer after Brazil and Colombia. Ninety percent of the country's production is robusta and the remainder arabica.

The country is the world's largest producer of robusta, whose harvest is between April and September, and provides 24 percent of global robusta production. Robusta is extensively used in the instant coffee industry.

The Association of Indonesian Coffee Exporters (AICE) has said the country's coffee exports dropped by 18.69 percent to 309,000 metric tons worth US$550 million in the 1997/1998 coffee year -- compared to 380,000 tons and $675 million the previous coffee year -- due to El Nino.

AICE's executive secretary Noer Madjid also predicted the country's coffee output would continue to decline this year by a further 30 percent because of the La Nia reverse weather pattern which would cause higher rainfall than normal.

He said heavy rains had affected coffee crops in major producing areas such as South Sumatra, Lampung and Bengkulu, which together account for about 65 percent of the country's production.

Coffee is the third largest foreign exchange earner among plantation commodities after rubber and palm oil, contributing about 22 percent of the agricultural export value.

Oskari said tight supplies on Indonesian coffee had provided Vietnamese coffee, Indonesia's main rival, a boost in demand.

He said that Vietnam's coffee production in 1997/1998 coffee year reached 5.7 million bags, equal to Indonesia's coffee production.

"In 1995/1996 they produced only 4 million bags, and look at them now," he said.

Meanwhile, Oskari said Indonesia was expected to produce 10 million bags of robusta coffee and 3 million bags of arabica coffee in 2005 to meet the global demand of 40 million bags and 80 million bags of robusta and arabica respectively.

"It is a challenge and opportunity for the Indonesian coffee community," he said. (gis)