Because of the lack of investment in recent years in the maintenance of the coffee park, in the first three months of the current harvest in El Salvador a 46% year-on-year drop in the volume of coffee production is reported.
Figures from the Salvadoran Coffee Council (CSC) indicate that from October to December 2019, nearly 358,000 quintals of coffee have been harvested, a volume that is lower than the 668,000 quintals produced in the same period in 2018.
For the 2017-2018 season, imported coffee consumed in the country represented 18% of demand, but for the 2018-2019 cycle that proportion increased to 45%, being Nicaragua and Honduras the main suppliers of the grain.
According to statistics from the General Directorate of Customs and compiled by the Coffee Institute of Costa Rica (Icafe), for the 2018-2019 cycle in the Costa Rican market were consumed about 526 thousand bags of 46 kilos of coffee, of which 292 thousand were of national production and 234 thousand were purchased abroad.
In Panama, decades ago the production of the sector represented 25% of the GDP, however, today this proportion barely reaches 2%, which is attributed to increased food imports and low soil productivity, among other factors.
Panamanian agricultural producers have been reporting difficulties in their activity for several years. This situation is reflected in the fall of the contribution made by this sector to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which fell from 25% in 1970 to 1.9% in 2018.
Partly explained by the exhaustion of soils dedicated to the cultivation of grain, in Costa Rica the 2018-2019 harvest was 1.7 million bags, one of the lowest records of recent decades.
Data from the Coffee Institute of Costa Rica (Icafé) specify that between the 2017-2018 season and 2018-2019, production in the country decreased by 276,970 bags of 46 kilograms, falling from 1,991,755 to 1,714,785 bags.
Guatemalan producers estimate that for the 2018-2019 harvest production will reach 752,575 metric tons of sugar, a volume that would be slightly higher than that recorded in the 2017-2018 cycle.
The Asociación de Azucareros de Guatemala (Asazgua) projects a slightly higher growth than the previous year because of climate factors, which will be confirmed when they have the final figures for closing production.
Between the 2016/17 and 2017/18 agricultural cycles, the volume of coffee harvested on Panamanian soil fell 15%, and the volume of sugar increased 9%.
According to the figures of the "Agricultural Survey of Coffee and Sugarcane of November 2018", compiled by the General Comptroller of the Republic, specify that the coffee activity for agricultural 2017/18 year had a harvest of 111,100 quintals piled, and in the case of sugarcane was 2,931,395 short tons.
The fall in international grain prices in recent years has increasingly affected producers in the region, who at current prices do not even reach the production costs.
Since years ago, international sugar prices have reported a clear downward trend, and in the last twelve months the quintal price registered a fall of 23%.
In the first days of January last year, the international price of sugar was above $15 per quintal, and that value has been decreasing in recent months, falling to $12 per quintal at the beginning of this year, according to Investing.com.
During the third quarter of 2018, the constant Gross Domestic Product totaled $10.453 million, 3.6% more than that reported in the same period of 2017.
The activities related to the domestic economy this quarter were good: transport and communications, local wholesale and retail trade, financial intermediation, construction, real estate and business services, private education and health, and government services.
In Costa Rica, the coffee sector expects that for the 2018-2019 harvest will be produced about 1.8 million quintals, a volume that would be 11% lower than that recorded in the 2017-2018 season.
According to forecasts by the Costa Rican Coffee Institute (Icafé), between the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 harvests, the country's production will fall from 2 million to 1.8 million quintals, a decline that would be caused by the cyclical behavior of plants and the aging of coffee plantations.
Because of the coffee production performance, during the second quarter of the year the Guatemalan agricultural GDP grew 4% compared to the same period in 2017.
From the statement of the Chamber of Agriculture of Guatemala:
Guatemala, November 8th, 2018. According to information from the data analysis consultant on economic, financial and socio-political issues, Central American Business Intelligence -CABI-, the GDP of the Agro Sector increased during the second quarter of this year by 3.9% year-on-year, the largest increase the sector has had in the last four years.
In Guatemala, for the 2018-2019 harvest, the production of green coffee is projected to reach 4.5 million quintals, which would exceed the 4.4 million quintals reported in the previous season.
According to Ricardo Arenas, president of the National Coffee Association (Anacafe), "... The 2018-2019 coffee harvest, which started last month, will stand at 4.5 million quintals of green coffee; of that figure, it is estimated that 3.5 million will be exported."
The rainfall deficit reported between the end of June and August, together with a summer that could be combined with El Niño starting from this November, raises the probability of drought in the sector.
According to data from the National Meteorological Institute (IMN), between January and August of this year in Liberia, province of Guanacaste, the rainfall deficit was 40% compared to the historical average.
Businesses in the sector foresee a decline during the 2018-2019 harvest, attributed to the drought and the illegal invasion of lands resulting from the political crisis that Nicaragua is experiencing.
According to statistics from the National Committee of Sugar Producers (CNPA), during the last two harvests the country reported a sustained increase in its sugar production.
The sector's union has estimated that for the 2017-2018 harvest 2.4 million hundredweight of beans will could have been produced, but due to climate effects, only 1.9 million hundredweight will be collected.
According to the Salvadoran Chamber of Small and Medium Agricultural Producers (Field), with the 500 thousand hundredweight of beans that will not be collected in the period 2017-2018, $25 million will be lost, as each hundredweight is valued at $50.
In the 2016/17 agricultural cycle coffee production amounted to 130,000 hundredweight, registering an increase of 8% compared to the previous harvest.
The Comptroller General of Panama reported that "... coffee activity for the 2016/17 agricultural year produced a harvest of 130,100 piled tons, and when this crop was compared with the 2015/16 agricultural year, which was 120,100, an increase was observed of 10,000 piled hundredweight, largely due to the fact that in the cultivations there is a large number of productive trees declared for this year and good flowering in the province of Chiriquí, which represented 79.5% of the total of the national harvest."