Tea plantations risk severe damage from El Nino, says ATI

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Indonesian Tea Association (ATI) warned that about 45 percent of the country's 140,000 hectares of tea plantations would suffer severe damage if the El Nino weather phenomenon returns this year.

ATI chairman Rachmat Badruddin said on Wednesday that tea plantations were very sensitive to changes in weather patterns, which may cause tea plants to perish.

"We are very worried about El Nino," he told The Jakarta Post.

Rachmat urged farmers to start taking measures to anticipate it including improving the fertilizing system.

"But I am worried that the traditional farmers do not have sufficient funds for such measures particularly as tea prices have been low," he said.

He said that local tea prices had dropped to an average of 95 U.S. cents per kilogram in 2001, from the previous year of about $1.10 per kilogram.

Rachmat said that Indonesian tea prices had continued to drop over the past ten years.

The association earlier predicted that this year's tea production would be around 150,000 tons.

The U.S. government weather forecaster of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) earlier said that the El Nino phenomena was likely to return this year.

The prediction was made based on the reading of warmer water in the Pacific Ocean.

The El Nino effect last occurred in the Pacific in 1997 and 1998. It was blamed for the severe droughts in Indonesia, Australia and the Philippines.

According to NOAA, the first region of the world to feel the impact would be the tropical pacific.

Meanwhile, the Association of Indonesian Coffee Exporters (AEKI) hoped that the return of El Nino could help boost current sagging coffee prices.

"We aren't praying for El Nino to return, but the fact is that it will be able to prop up sagging coffee prices as production will decline," AEKI deputy chairman Nuril Hakim told the Post.

He said that Indonesian coffee output was projected to decline by 15 percent from 420,000 tons last year due to El Nino.

Coffee prices have long been under pressure amid an oversupply problem in the market due to abundant supplies from key coffee- producing countries particularly Vietnam, Brazil and India.

The coffee price is currently hovering at around $340 per ton.

Nuril said that world coffee prices could soar to an average of $800 per ton if output in major production countries could be significantly reduced with the return of El Nino.

Earlier efforts to limit coffee supply in the world market have failed.