Coffee Crop 2021

Coffee Harvests

Ripe Robusta coffee berries ready for harvesting

Well, it’s that time of year again…the coffee harvests. The crop seems to have been ready for picking a little later than last year, but the volume of berries harvested from the end of January to the end of February 2021 was certainly much greater than last year and from the same suppliers. The picking of coffee is expected to continue until the end of March or mid April 2021.

Coffee berries in racks in the drying shed

Flowering

Three periods of flowering of the coffee trees were observed; one in late January, another in mid February and the other in early March. There seemed to be more abundant flowers in March, including from the two-year old arabicas. This last flowering period occurred after a couple of days of rainfall…unusual for this time of the year…our dry season. Although the dry season normally starts in January, there was much rain during that month; February was mainly dry and we are getting some rain again during the second week of March. The dry season ends in May. 

Robusta coffee in flower

Close-up to the coffee flower

La Niña

This unusual rainy incident may be as a consequence of the El Niño/La Niña Southern Oscillation. We are apparently in a La Niña year where it peaked in October-November 2020 as a moderate strength event. There is a 65% likelihood that it will persist during February-April as it impacts on temperatures, precipitation and storm patterns. Despite the general cooling influence of La Niña events, land temperatures are expected to be above-normal for most parts of the globe in February-April 2021 (https://reliefweb.int/report/world/wmo-el-ni-ola-ni-update-january-2021).

New Varieties

Purple berry...

A few varieties new to me, were also seen during my annual exploration of old coffee estates in the northern part of the country. Some of these estates are in the process of rehabilitation. Samples of these varieties were obtained for processing and roasting to determine flavour and acceptance among my coffee tasting panel.

Next

Look out for a new Café Vega product in my next post. In the meantime, you can look up “hashara” on the internet!