Cold wave in Brazil causes coffee prices to skyrocket in the international market

Coffee prices have soared in recent weeks on the international market in the face of intense cold in Southeast Brazil, which could harm plantations in Minas Gerais and São Paulo.

Brazil is the largest exporter of coffee and sugar in the world.

Arabica beans rose more than 10% in the last 20 days to close at $2,272 in the most traded contract on Tuesday.

The fear of analysts is that there will be frosts in the producing regions. The height of the cold is usually between June and August and the atypical weather of May brought apprehension. The last time there was frost in coffee producing areas in May was in 1979.

– The risk is very low (of frost), in the case of coffee producing areas, only at higher altitudes in some specific points of Paraná and Minas Gerais – said Donald Keeney, meteorologist at Maxas Technologies.

The Hightower Report, a firm specializing in market research for commodities, assesses that, even if the most pessimistic forecasts for the climate are not confirmed, lower temperatures in Brazil will keep coffee prices under pressure in the international market.

For the consumer, the effect will be to pay more for coffee. In the last 12 months, the price of coffee powder has risen 67.53% on supermarket shelves. In the first four months of this year alone, the increase reached 13.22%, according to IBGE data.

Source: The Globe