Coffee
Good ‘off year’ for Brazil coffee
BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) — Top grower Brazil will harvest 48.6 million 60 kilogram bags of coffee in the 2013-14 crop that begins in late May, hitting the midpoint in a January projection of 47 to 50.2 million bags, the agriculture ministry forecast.
The ministry’s crop supply agency, Conab, estimated May 14 that production of high quality arabica coffee would reach 36.4 million bags and lower quality robusta output would be 12.2 million bags.
The 2013-14 crop comes in a lower-output “off year” in the biological two-year cycle in Brazil, in which trees produce more one year and less the next. But the variations between harvests are steadily diminishing, Conab said in a report.
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The crop is forecast to be the largest ever for an “off year,” Conab said.
Agfinance
Co-ops plan joint venture
CHICAGO, Ill. (Reuters) — CHS Inc., the largest U.S. farm co-op, and Nebraska-based Aurora Co-operative have formed a 50-50 joint venture to build and operate a 1.2 million bushel grain facility to load high-speed rail shuttles near Superior, Nebraska.
Superior East LLC will begin construction immediately and the facility is expected to be completed in a year.
It will include a 120-rail car circle to move corn, soybeans and hard red winter wheat to markets as far west as export terminals in the Pacific Northwest Portland region and southern export facilities in the Gulf as well as into Mexico.
The location will provide a grain ground piling system and 10,000-ton liquid fertilizer storage.
production
Thailand grapples with rice mountains
BANGKOK, Thailand (Reuters) — Sacred white oxen at a recent plowing ceremony in Thailand predicted a big rice crop.
It was an ominous sign for a government running out of space to store vast stocks after two years of buying at above market prices to help farmers.
Thailand’s agriculture ministry forecasts production of 27 million tonnes in the 2013-14 main crop in November, up from 26 million tonnes a year earlier, an official at the ceremony said.
By choosing corn and grass over other delicacies, the oxen also signaled large harvests for the May-November season, according to soothsayers.
A state policy of paying farmers 50 percent above market prices, and the government’s unwillingness to then sell the rice at a loss, has already eaten up available storage space, heaping pressure on the government to decide what to do.
International Aid
UN appeals for Niger food aid
NIAMEY, Niger (Reuters) — About 800,000 people will require food aid in Niger in the coming months despite a good harvest last year due to problems supplying cereals to markets, which have pushed up prices, and an influx of Malian refugees, the United Nations said.
The UN office for humanitarian co-ordination (OCHA) said it would need food from now until the start of the rainy season, which is usually in June, July and August.
It said the situation was critical in 13 regions surveyed by the government in March, where 84,000 people needed emergency food aid.
The agency cited problems with supplying food to markets in some areas, such as the northern mining region of Arlit and Tahoua in central Niger and Tillabery in the west, which had driven up cereals prices.
Recurrent shortages in recent years have forced nomadic people with grazing animals to sell their livestock, including the valuable young females normally kept for breeding, which had reduced their resistance to food shocks.
The presence of some 60,000 refugees from Mali, where a French-led international mission has battled Islamist rebels since January, has exacerbated food shortages in Tillabery and Tahoua, OCHA has said.
