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Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of coffee, sugar and orange juice. It has just been in the rainy season with almost no rainfall.
In the central and southern regions of the country, agricultural production is high, the soil is dry, and the river water level is low. The drought is so severe that farmers worry that their water reserves will be used up, which will help maintain the survival of crops in the next few months of the country’s dry season.
Mauricio Pinheiro, 59, started irrigating Arabica coffee in March after less than half of the rainfall required for his 53 hectares (131 acres) plantation, two earlier than usual. month. He used so much water for the plants that there was not much left in his home. In order to keep the shower and faucet running, he had to find another well.
“My irrigation reservoir is now dry-it usually happens in August,” said Pinheiro, who lives in Pedregulho, Alta Mogiana, São Paulo. “I am really worried that the water will run out in the next few months.”
When crops rise to multi-year highs, orange and coffee trees may wither, which intensifies people’s concerns about food inflation. High food costs can exacerbate hunger, and the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated this problem globally. Coffee and raw sugar contracts on the New York ICE Futures Exchange have reached a four-year high.
If even irrigated areas cannot get enough water, Brazil’s coffee and orange production may decline for the second year in a row. Brazil’s current orange harvest has shrunk 31% from the previous season, the highest in 33 years, and the production of Arabica coffee, a high-end coffee used by chains such as Starbucks Corp., has also fallen sharply.
John Corbett, CEO of aWhere Inc., said that from January to April, rainfall in many areas of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais was very low. At the critical moment when coffee plants need water, the worst-affected areas receive less than half of the normal rainfall. Let the beans grow. This is also the period when the soil stores water to cope with the dry season.
Paul Markert, a meteorologist at Maxar Technologies Inc. in Maryland, said this was an adverse condition that was drier than normal in some areas last year, especially in Sao Paulo and Parana.
Although it is relatively dry at this time of the year in Brazil, it is expected to last longer than usual, which adds to people’s concerns. Celso Oliveira, a meteorologist at Somar Meteorologia, said that regular rainfall will return to the area between October and November instead of September.
Approximately 30% of orange crops and 15% of Arabica coffee fields in Brazil are irrigated.
“The water levels of rivers and lakes are very worrying,” said Regis Ricco, director of RR Consultoria Rural in Minas Gerais.
Francisco Sergio de Assis, a coffee grower in Monte Carmelo, Cerrado Region, Minas Gerais, started irrigating his farmland a month in advance. He believes that if nine If it doesn’t rain in the month, his reservoir will not last.
The situation in the orangery has become more and more serious. Emerson Fachini is an orange farmer who planted 45 hectares of land in Palestine, São Paulo State. He said that since January, he has been turning on the irrigation system most of the time.
Gilberto Tozatti of GCONCI-Group Citrus Consulting, headquartered in Sao Paulo, said on the phone: “The reservoir has been dried up, and it happened to be used up during the dry season. Some areas, and are still damaging the next season’s harvest. “
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