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49220 views January 30, 2014 posted by Maja Wallengren

Vietnam 2013-14 Coffee Exports To Jan 31 Seen Down 32% To 6.87 Million Bags

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Robusta Coffee Grower Chau Ngoc Hung in Vietnam
–Coffee grower in Vietnam’s Dak Lak province showing trees with good yields but no record crop

JAN 30 (SpillingTheBeans)–Coffee exports from Vietnam during the first four months of the 2013-14 crop year from October through January are seen down 32 percent to 6.87 million 60-kilogram bags, the official Vietnamese General Statistics Office said in Hanoi, according to a report by Dow Jones Newswires.

This compares to total exports of 10.1 million bags in the first four months of the last 2012-13 crop cycle and fall short of expectations from traders who have insisted that growers are holding back on coffee and that exports would surge in the month of January as producers would start to sell.

As reported earlier here, SpillingTheBeans has insisted for most of the last year that there is no evidence of a record crop and anyone in the industry who knows and understands the basics of the nature of coffee trees and production agree with this.

For more on the 2013-14 coffee crop in Vietnam don’t miss our latest “MARKET ANALYSIS: Vietnam 2013-14 Coffee Exports Continue To Plummet — Where Is The Record Crop? https://globalcoffeefund.com/market-analysis-vietnam-2013-14-coffee-exports-down-32-to-dec-31-where-is-the-record-crop/

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15 Comments

  • I’m so glad to have found this site and recommend to others. When I was in Bao Loc, Vietnam in May 2013 inspecting our tea farm, a terrible drought ravaged our 50 hectares. For a good 2 months, we couldn’t irrigate our Tea as the reservoirs dried up. The drought severely affected our harvest by 30%…and this was just Camellia sinesis not bearing new tea flushes. The robusta farms surrounding our farm appear equally affected. Good to know that Spilling-the-beans.net was able to see past the mainstream futures analyst! – Scott

    • Thanks so much Scott, I really appreciate your comments because sadly the futures market is obsessed with speculative trade, and has spent months and months trying to talk this harvest up when it since the drought in February was clear such a record, let alone a bumper crop, would not materialize exactly because of the factors you describe as in the case of your tea farm. This position of the futures market is obviously easily explained as the funds have held record short positions for long stretches of the year and are still oversold. Most of the so-called analysts that cover the coffee sector has never even been to producing countries, let alone Vietnam. Among those who have been to Vietnam, they generally compare yields to what they see in Central America and Africa, which is a very bad comparative when they should compare to what Vietnamese yields and the state of farms looked like 20-30 years ago when it was all newly planted areas. Even the USDA continues to confuse “new areas” as expansion, when in fact there is very little actually new lands under coffee, rather than areas that have been renovated. Add to this the fact that the market and those covering don’t grasp the severity of the socio-economic issues at stake in most of the world’s producing countries including rapidly dwindling farm plot size feeding more people every day, which simply has left a lot of land to be left in a state of abandonment with minimum farm work producing minimum yields. Again, thanks so much for your input, and really hope to get the China report up and running during the weekend. Can’t wait for your comments 🙂

  • Maja you are so right about your understanding of the coffee industry from outside the point of view of traders and also about the fact that many traders don’t have a realistic idea about whats going on in Producing countries. Let me tell you my story, I’ll try to be short; I am a coffee producer from El Salvador and let me tell you, the roya disease has swept half of the coffee area and production this 2013-2014 harvest is going to be the worst since 1932 from 1.7 million 2 years ago to about 400 or maybe 500 thousand bags. The average producction is 1qq oro/mz, for example I used to harvest 12 to 22 qq/mz before roya showed up and this last year (2012-2013) my average was 6qq/mz and the country’s average would be around 1 to 2 qq/mz, all this because there is no help from the goverment, economicaly and thecnicaly, ultra low prices paid to producers internally based on the New York exchange, cruel and evil prices for over 3 years. Susceptible plants (90 percent of our coffee area is planted with bourbon varietal), no international aid, erratic wheather during flowering last year when we suffered a drought, so basicly 90 percent of coffee producers here are facing bancruptcy and thousands of rural workers lost their jobs, about 250.000 people. Thank you for this great blog, hope to hear from you

  • Juan, your story is similar to many of my vecinos in Jinotega, Nicaragua. My farm is primarily caturra and pacamara and Gesha. While my neighbors are awashed in Roya, my farm has some, but very little. As a pediatrician that treats a lot of malnourished children, antibiotics are useless for infections when a child is malnourished. Improve the child’s nutrition, and antibiotics work better. As for coffee and roya, your fungicides are useless if your coffee are malnourished. Roya is devestaing between december and february. why? Coffee is busy ‘giving birth’, creating coffee cherries, and much of the nutrition goes to the babies, the coffee cherries. The coffee plant is weak so roya takes over and infect the coffee. While many fertilize at the beginning of the rainy season in May, I fertilize right now in January. The rain of the rainy season (now) dissolves the urea and feed the coffee plant quickly and bringing it back to health. Do not apply urea during the dry season, as urea within days will vaporize to ammonia and lost to the atmosphere. Most of the coffee is already harvested, so the urea feeds the plant, and not the cherries. After repela, the coffee plants can fully heal, and get ready for flowering. This is when you can apply the fungicides such as Alto 10, cyproconazole. Fungicides works best with well nourished coffee. Healthy coffee with good immunity can fight off roya. Also systemic fungicides such as alto 10 works best when there are many leaves, as fungicides need surface area to absorb. If you can mix the fungicides with an adjuvent, a surfactant that helps the fungicides adhere to the leaves, it will make the fungicides last longer on the leaves. Ultimately if you dont fertilize your coffee, applying fungicides 10 times a year will not even save the coffee. I apply fungicides two times a year to the whole farm, and a third just in area needed, usually en la frontera, cerca de vecinos como tienen roya. Wind breaks help, but nutrition is most important. During the dry season, I apply bayfolan micronutrients and urea with the fungicides. Try to spray under the leaves, as the stomata of the coffee are under the leaves, this is where nutrition and fungicides from foliar sprays enter, but the uredospores of roya also enter through the stomatas under the leaves. . But also This year we will plant Castillos de colombia, subvariety Marsellesa. Debate in quality, but I’m not going to argue between cupping points between caturra and castillo when the differential is only 2 points. Check with your beneficio if they have fosforitos or seeds de Castillo for sale. Atlantico, S.A. en Sebaco, Nicaragua are selling Castillo fosforitos. The goal is not to kill roya, but to control it. Why did roya take over?….remember when coffee prices were high, there was little roya, because farmers had money to buy fertilizer. Roya only happened when C price of coffee fell and farmers couldn’t buy fertilizer and agrochemicals to maintain the farms. Hope there was something useful here. Scott

    • Scott, Thank you so much for your reply I found it very helpfull, let me ask you someyhing
      How much Urea can be aplied to a 200 lt barrel in the mix with fungicide like alto or amystar xtra ?or in other words how much of urea did you aply whit your fungicide before flowering because Im planning to give my coffee farm a foliar aplication of fungicide alto or amistar xtra and probably add urea and a micronutrient foliar like bayfolan forte or some other quelated aminoacid base product to the mix.
      Im asking you about the urea amount because someone told me that too much urea applied via foliar
      could result in dammage to coffee leaves beacuse urea lowers extremely the temperature of whater , so if you apply too much of it you could end up damaing the leaves , could you please help me clarify this?
      And by the way thank you again for all the information you shared whit me in your comment.
      Best Regards
      Juan

    • Hello Juan and Maja,
      I add 4 kg por barril. But mature coffee plants can tolerate up to 4-5% or 8-10 kg pf urea por barril. There is a difference between urea and nitrate, nitrates can burn, whereas urea much less along with a bottle of Bayfolan. You have to heal your trees so there will be better flowering. Your coffee has 4 months of healing, rest, and stress (oxymoron) and flowering left before the beginning of next rainy season. Also foliar spraying is more beneficial if your coffee has a lot of leaves and doesnt look like skeletons. I use shindawa motobomba mister as it creates smaller droplets and can spray over 5-10 meters.
      If Maja’s prediction holds that Vietnam and Brazil’s crop will be smaller and the price of coffee goes up, a recovery of your coffee production with nutrition and flowering will at least return some revenue that would have been lost!

      Also a correction and a sell off in stocks is underway and many fund managers are moving money out of stocks and into commodities. The news of brazil dry weather giving the trader a reason. This may be artificial as if it rains in Sao Paolo or Minas grais then the prices crashes again.

      My favorite coffee resources now includes the blogs of Maja, Jim Stevens, the Coffee Heretic and Coffee Shrub, just insightful and honest and thoughtful! Thank you!

  • Hola Juan, muchas gracias por tu comentario, ya sabes no hay ningun requisito para tener un ingles perfecto aqui 🙂 Scott, Juan, thanks for these contributions and insight about your situations, I really appreciate it, and have a lot of news coming up in the next few days on this situation. All the best, Maja

  • Hello Scott and Maja:
    Maja thank you so much for such a warm wellcome to this awesome place , Scott thank you again for sharing whit me your experience about coffee Nutrition , like you said summer is the most stresful season of the year for coffee plants, one last question for you scott , in my understanding you said that for a 200lt/55 galon barril i need:
    1 lt of bayfolan Forte
    4kg of urea (46% Nitrogen) = 8.8 pounds
    Fungicide
    adjuvent, or surfactant
    also would be ok if I add Boro ( Solubor) and Zinc to the Mix.
    Thanks again and hopr to hear from you again Soctt and Maja
    Blessings
    Juan

  • Hello Juan,
    You can add boro, it will help with flowering in foliar sprays. The list you have is what I use for foliar sprays. I just finished applying 2 ounces of urea to each tree this week. After harvest the coffee needs to be replenished with nitrogen quickly before rainy season is over and hopefully you can have good primero, segundo and tercero flowering. Nitrogen will be stored in the raices, ramas and restore your coffee’s immunity to help fight off disease and promote flowering. If the drought continues in Brazil and next year’s coffee production is down globally, you can recover some of your loss from this roya outbreak with good flowering this year. Also prune your shade trees to allow more sun light to help promote flowering. Coffee also needs much energy from the sun.

  • Soctt:
    Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience about coffee nutrition whit me, I will do as you sugest my first Foilar aplication pre Flowering another question whats yor ph after you finish mixing all the nutrientes in the barril before filling your motorized sprayer because i being told to use a ph betwen 5.5-6 does this looks right for you? Also last Year here in El Salvador Flowering started in April 14 Do you think is safe to apply 2 Foliar Sprays before Flowering the first one lets say next week and the second in the midle of march?
    Hope to hear again from you
    Best Regards
    Juan

  • Hello Juan, I don’t know the answer for pH, but Bayfolan, fungicide woll be close to neutral as is urea, so I don’t anticipate issues of burning the leaves. Be sure you have applied your 60-90 grams of urea per coffee tree before rainy season is over. Foliar spray can never completely replace good nutrition to the coffee roots! We foliar twice between february to May, between the three flowerings. Happy flowering!

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