LatinNews Daily - 19 May 2023

* The Companhia Nacional do Abastecimento (Conab), the logistics arm of Brazil’s agriculture ministry, has updated its forecast for the 2023 coffee harvest, predicting that Brazil’s coffee producers will collect 54.74m sacks of coffee this year (one sack = 60kg). This would mark a 7.5% increase on the 50.92m sacks collected in the 2022 harvest and a 14.7% increase on the 2021 harvest, which was the last negative biennial year, as coffee production often alternates between one year of high yield and then a drop the following year. This latest forecast is slightly lower than Conab’s previous forecast released in January, which predicted 54.94m sacks. In terms of coffee types this year, arabica is expected to make up 69.3% of the 2023 harvest, with 37.93m sacks predicted, which would mark an annual increase of 15.9%. The harvest of robusta, however, is expected to come to 16.81m sacks, which would be down 7.6% from last year.