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Welcome to the Daily Coffee Pro by Map of Forward Friends. I'm your host Lee Safar and this is episode two of a five-part series with Brazilian coffee agronomist Jonas. We are talking about the 2026 Brazilian coffee harvest. And in this episode, we are specifically talking about what the expectations of the 2026 harvest is in Brazil.
So Jonas, tell us everything. Well, one thing that's interesting that we saw in the last years, it's how conifera, the robusta, grow in area is not in area, but in yields. There's a lot of technology involved in growing coniferas in Brazil. I said coniferas always because in Brazil, we have two types of coniferas.
One is robusta, that's grow worldwide and another one is conilon. Which is, it's not a variety, it's hard to explain. It's like a different type. The fruits is a little bit different, the yields is different to you, the plain shape is different, but the both are coniferas.
Worldwide, we know robusta because most of the countries do not grow conilon, they grow robusta, but we saw the conilon expanding in a state that's called a spirit center. They use a lot of technology to grow, they have incredible yields, and we saw an average of production that was, let me say, five years ago about that. Something about 12 million bags of coniferas in Brazil, two is spike to 24, 25, some people say 27 million bags of conifera, and they play a very important role in the Brazilian exploitation too, because they occupy the arabica that are having issues since 2021, and they could make the market more balanced. We do not export a lot of conifera, but we can keep this conifera for the massive market and export the arabicas to, I think, attend the contracts for international buyers.
So the conifera was a surprise, they are like robusta, they are more rustic, and growing, they need more water than arabicas, and they usually are growing in lower areas, not high areas as arabica. So, and we are seeing a good season for coniferas from the next season. Coniferas have another advantage, they do not have the bi-weekly, bi-weekly not, the annual circle of fear and no near, it's very, very small, not like arabica, that we have a huge variation usually, the plant behaved in a different way of growing, that they could harvest good average season in conifera if they were well-managed. So we harvest about 24 million less season, and probably this season we harvest something about that.
Yeah, based on the conifera data is the one national institute that do the survey about yields and areas in Brazil, and we are starting to harvest the same, it's still a lot to expand, as we see word wild, how the robusta and conifera grow word wild in other countries, they start to grow to be more robusta than 20 years ago, for instance, that they are very small in the market share of coffee chain. So we saw this is a play important role in Brazil now. For arabica, which are a more sensitive species, we saw issues since 2001 with the season, farmers are striking to survive, fighting to survive in the in the fields to the climate, when we have a drought frost or a cold or even heat waves and everything related to climate, it's what is affecting coffee since 2001 after the biggest frost that we had in the recent past. And one thing that's interesting since there, the market, the traders say everything we're going to be fine, and we not see that in anyway, so coffee need the most arabica, which are in more sensitive areas in Brazil, they need good climate conditions to survive, to grow, to have good yields, and arabica, everything that happens in the seasons before affect the current season.
So what we are seeing in 2026 is it's kind of a trace of something that happens in 2025. So when people say now the rains are going to push the yields in Brazil to the high levels, they sometimes do not understand we need a good blossom season in September to November in order to have fruits to beer and to, how can I say, to the plants, beer these fruits and to the harvest season. What we have now for arabica, we are having a January, February, March with good temperatures and good rain distribution along the arabica areas, and the volume is great, because there are seasons that we have good rains, but concentrated in a few days or in a few regions or in a few areas, but for these last three months we saw rains spreading across all the arabica areas, so the coffee is beautiful there. That means the 2020-7 could be good if everything goes well, because we have a good vegetative level on the trees in March, which is excellent for the next season, but for the current season we will see something very close to 2000, what we harvest in 2025, a little bit more, because there is an interesting phenomenon, I think is the right word, in arabica areas, which I call like islands of production.
There are places in arabica areas which we have some plant conditions that push the season to very high yields for many reasons, for instance, if in two years ago the farmer, how can I say, like prune, cut all the trees, in order to have no season 2025, the plants grow well until 2025 and have a beautiful blooming, which is coming since there with a good yield in that area. Young plants, which will bring the first season for the farmer, we'd have about three to four years, we'll have some a good yield to be harvest, and areas with the rains were better in November to December, and we do not have spikes in temperatures, so there are some islands of yields that when I travel across Minajirai or Sao Paulo, I saw that areas with the plant totally filled with berries, but let me say something about 30 to 40 percent of the areas that I visit are in that situation, so depending where you look for the arabica area, you could see a huge season, or where you take the data, or who calls you and said how the cough season is in Brazil, so this island of production kind of mislead, I don't know, it's misleading. So that why we should take our eyes in every area, and in average, what I see, it's a season close to 2025, but because of this island of production in the arabicas, we saw something better than last season, would be totally better as 2020 season, no, not because in that time, it's not going to be the record, because in that time, all the areas was that I know because I traveled to some areas and was kind of amazing to see how all the coffee trees were filled with berries almost everywhere, no matter the size, the age of the tree, the state of the tree, sometimes trees are kind of not healthy enough, but they have a good yields buried by the tree, so it was fantastic. The only way that we should say the season will be close to 2020, if we have the wrong numbers in 2020 in that time, because it's not close in terms of plant behavior yields and everything, what changes since then, we take the statistics to see, it's, we have more technology in coffee, which is true, but the area of growing, it's almost the same, it's, I saw the statistics was about, I think, two or two weeks ago, we like grow like less than 10 in area of growing since there, so it's not because of the area was expanding, so we couldn't produce more coffee, no, the area is almost the same, we put a little bit more of technology since there, but we had climate issues in 2025 was not perfect, so I think we'll be something close to 2025 and a little bit more.
A lot of, you're hearing a lot of people whisper out there saying, this is going to be a record year, or there's going to be so, so much coffee out there, and if I understand you correctly, that's not the case, it's going to be a decent harvest, similar to 2025. Will this war have an impact on what happens at harvest, if we connect it back to what we were talking about in the last episode, do we, do we think that the war might stop at any of the, like is there a potential for this war to mean that that coffee might not get out of Brazil, is it going to be harder to get it to different parts of Brazil, is there anything that may cause that to be a problem? I don't think so in terms of logistics, because as a parameter, or as a standard, I always think about pandemic, with everyone was worried about logistics of coffee, we have a crisis in containers, we have that now, we have that now. Yeah, since there, as I know, we still have in this crisis, since the pandemic, since the pandemic, wow, the continuous crisis was, it's something that word do not, is still not putting the trails again, since there, but for coffee, because of the pandemic, which I think was the the worst prices in logistics for everything, we do not see any issue related to exploitation, not something that we are not already have in Brazil.
For instance, one thing that is an issue in Brazil, it's our harbor is structure, for exploitation, for many stuff in Brazil, we are kind of outdated in some stuff to do exploitation. So some months, for instance, this is official data, from Seica Faire, the export co-sale of coffee, is something like that in English. They said, every month, we are having trouble with exploitation, we have a lot of coffee that could be exported in this month, but we can't do it, because our harbor structure is not well updated to do this amount of coffee, that it's a red salad, the ships are available, the papers are fine, but we not could... Volume is too much and they can't process that much.
Yeah, put the volume on the coffee, process and put on the chips, on the containers, to export. So we have some kind of, I don't know, when it's a nice strangling, I forgot the word in it. Chuck Holt, it's a chuck. Yeah, it's a choke, yeah.
So this is already an issue that we should face. So the war in logistics, for now, I don't see, only if we have some issues in Europe to receive or have some issues to receive ships on containers, or we have some issues to that ships to came to Brazil, with, like I said, in pandemic, we do not see that for coffee, at least. It's like every year, just some small issues, and we have a problem with personnel there, because a lot of people can't go to work in the... Right, because they're coming around, right?
Yeah, so because of the pandemic, so people like working in the logistics chain in Brazil, which some have issues with health, other with the age they can't do, and even there we not have a huge issue with logistics. That's why in the first glance, I think this will be not a huge issue. At first glance, but if petrol gets very expensive, and if shipping things gets very expensive, this could be, this could impact things, right? If farmers aren't getting paid, because where I'm thinking about this from Jonas is from, I'm looking at the sea price, right?
And the sea price right now is a little confusing. Are you confused by the sea price right now? It keeps going down. It's starting to go up a little bit, but it's still under $3 right now.
Do you find that a little confusing? For this moment? For me, always sea prices are very confusing. Sometimes more confusing than usual.
Right now, people have been very confused the last couple of... Let's say the last six to seven weeks, because it was like it was free falling. It wasn't free falling. If you look at it where it is at the moment, it's somewhere around the 290s, but most of last year, it was above $3, and at hit a record price, and people were saying, let's hope that it stays this high.
Every coffee producer that I speak to, Jonas is telling me, it's getting harder and harder and harder to grow arabica everywhere. So why isn't the price continuing to go up? And so people are confused by this. And where I'm confused at the moment is, what impact is the war we're going to have on the next harvest?
Because we're almost finished this harvest, we're finished this harvest, which is it? We're completely finished the 2026 harvest? To a 2025 harvest is a red finish? 2026.
At 2026, it's about to begin. It's about to begin. Okay, in Brazil. In Brazil, sorry.
If energy gets very, very expensive, what ends up happening with regards to this next harvest? Brazil, like I said, is a particular case for two reasons. Of course, we grow a lot of coffee, but we consume a lot of coffee in the domestic market. So it's different for some countries that if they do not export coffee or have some issues with the exploitation, it would be a huge issue for them to deal with that.
In Brazil, we drink about more than 20 to 24 million bags of coffee. Which is a lot. So if some price is striking the exploitation, we could use a good part of coffee for some time, of course, because we can't drink all the 60 or 55 million of bags. But we could use the coffee for the domestic market.
As we know, for sure, that the domestic stocks of coffee are very low since the last two years. We do not have a lot of stocks stored in private warehouse. We don't have ways to measure that, but you just go to the forums and some private warehouse to know that, that there's not coffee from the last season storage. They are waiting the new harvest to come in order to export.
So in the first moment, we have some strategy in case of Brazil to use that coffee for roasting. Maybe the price will be not good, but we don't waste the right term like stockpile the coffee. And the way it's Brazil, and I know that have an important role in the coffee chain for many blains or for many companies. For instance, I talked with a huge company in Brazil, a huge company manager in Brazil.
And he said, because of this problem with the harbor in Brazil, a company like higher a private ship in order to take the coffee that was delayed to do the exploitation by itself. It's not usually to do that because it costs a lot of money to the company. But they find some way to bring the take this Brazilian coffee to exploitation. Only if we have a huge crisis, which we don't know, that we will affect this all the trade issue will be a problem in medium-term from Brazil to export that coffee, which could affect the farmer for sure.
But we have to understand at least in Brazil, we have way to store this coffee for more than a year. If we need it, they only should that farmer will still need the money to pay their bills, but they will not lost the money in some way. They could farmers in Brazil are very, it's very usual to store the coffee in the farm. I know some countries, they send to a different association or cooperatives to store the coffee there.
We have that in Brazil too, but all the farmers that went in the last 10 years have conditioned to store the coffee in the farm. They have space for that since always. It's not more usual than before, because now it's more safer to keep the coffee like these huge cooperatives. They have like insurance and stuff like that.
And God, security. Yeah, everything. And what farmers have a condition to do that. And thinking about how these affect the farmers in short-term, maybe not too much too, because of the last year's price, they have some money spare to some kind of emergency.
Yeah, emergency. So they could absorb some kind of this impact, which like three years ago when the farmers are in a huge crisis in prices, they need to sell the coffee no matter the prices they have. Now they have more conditions to take the coffee a little bit. It's very risk.
Most of the farmers, small and medium farmers, I know already sell all the beans before that. But the huge ones are keeping some because they have more conditions to speculate because they have more money to keep it in order to not sell the coffee to pay the bills in certain ways. But the small and medium farmers, it's really hard to go in a farm and they say, I have still coffee from 2002 and 2005 season. They already sell almost, the small ones almost sell everything.
They need the money. They do not risk as much. So the issue for me, it will be in medium term. If this crisis goes to maybe in two August, if we're still in this tense scenario, for me, this will be a time to worry what will be the expectation, the fertilizers, the energy, then everything will impact the coffee and the coffee chains.
Okay, awesome. Thank you for letting us, giving us a clearer picture of exactly what we can expect from what's happening. In the next episode, folks, we're going to talk about how a few elements, things like genetics and tech and these kind of irrigation and more of those different kinds of elements, how they're affecting coffee production in Brazil, as you will know, you know, agriculture all over the world is having to adapt to some significant rapid changes in climate and other things. So how are these different elements of growing coffee and technologies, playing a role in coffee production in Brazil?
So join us for the third episode of this series. Peace out and peanut butter, have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, consider supporting my beforeward our guests and advertisers on social media. Subscribe, hit the like button, leave a comment and share this episode with a friend.
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