Brazil’s Coffee Growers Speed Harvest on High Prices, Cepea Says

Coffee growers in Brazil, the world’s largest producer, are accelerating the harvest of arabica beans to take advantage of the current high prices, according to Cepea, a University of Sao Paulo research group.

Arabica coffee for July delivery touched $3.089 a pound yesterday on ICE Futures U.S. in New York, the highest since May 1997. The price fell 0.2 percent to $3.056 a pound in New York by 10:18 a.m. London time. Arabica coffee is grown mainly in Latin America and brewed by specialty companies including Starbucks Corp.

“Some small volumes of the 2011-12 season have been placed to trade,” Margarete Boteon, an analyst at Cepea, wrote in a report yesterday. “Growers are advancing the harvest aiming to take advantage of current prices.”

Harvesting of robusta beans, the typed used in instant coffee, continued to be delayed by rains in the state of Espirito Santo, the country’s main producing region of the variety. “Rains have not allowed advances in harvesting activities of the new season,” Boteon wrote in the report.