World production in coffee year 2019/20 is estimated at 168.55 million bags, which is 1.6% lower than in 2018/19. Production
of Robusta increased by 3.2% to 72.82 million bags with the largest increases in Viet Nam, Indonesia, and Uganda. Arabica production fell by 5.1% to 95.73 million bags, as increases in Colombia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Mexico could not offset losses in output from Brazil and Honduras.
Production in
South America fell by 4.6% to 78.87 million bags and accounted for 46.8% of global output. The regional decline
is largely due to the decrease in Brazil’s output,
which fell by 6.1% to 59.5 million bags in 2019/20. Brazil’s Arabica output declined by 9.9% to 38.7 million bags, while Robusta
rose
by 2% to 20.8 million bags.
Production in Colombia rose by
1.7%
to 14.1 million bags, as replanted trees
came into production and higher prices in several months encouraged farmers to harvest coffee. Peru’s output
in 2019/20 declined by 4% to 4 million bags due to adverse weather and low prices leading farmers to turn to other crops with better returns.
Output from Asia & Oceania rose by 4.1% to 50.07 million bags. Viet Nam’s production increased by 4% to
31.5 million
bags in 2019/20, of which
around
5% is Arabica coffee.
Indonesia’s production increased by 11.7% to
11.19 million
bags in 2019/20, after
three years
of falling
output. India experienced another fall in production in 2019/20 due to unfavourable weather, reaching
4.97 million bags, which is 6.7% lower than in 2018/19 and the third consecutive year of decrease.
Africa’s output
remained
stable at 18.86 million bags in 2019/20.
Increases
in production from Ethiopia and from Uganda were offset by declines in the region’s next three largest producers. Ethiopia harvested 7.7 million bags, 2.1% more than in 2018/19, due to beneficial
weather and adequate rain. Uganda’s production increased by 11.6% to 5.25 million bags as result of good weather and
higher
yields
from new trees coming
into
production. Côte d’Ivoire’s output decreased by 18.4% to 2 million bags, Tanzania’s by 17.3% to 926,000 bags, and Kenya’s by 8.6%
to 850,000 bags.
Global consumption from October 2019 to September 2020 is estimated to
have fallen by 0.9% to 167.59 million bags, following an increase of 4.6% in 2018/19 to 169.11 million bags. As a
result, a surplus of 961,000
bags is estimated
for coffee year 2019/20, which limited recovery in the ICO indicator price for 2019/20 to an average of 107.25
US cents/lb, 6.7% higher
than
in 2018/19.