Coffee Output Drops with Extreme Climate
13 October 2014 15:00 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Extreme weather strikes Indonesia's coffee production centers, causing production to plunge by 15 percent. Last year, the national coffee output reached 700,000 tons, while this year's target was pegged at just 625,000 tons.
South Sumatra, which produces plenty of coffee, for example, is getting lots of heavy rain. Consequently, farmers failed to harvest coffee," Hutama Gandhi, chairman of the Indonesian Coffee Exporters Association, told Tempo last weekend.
Hutama said Indonesia's coffee production accounts for just five percent (420,000 tons) of the global coffee consumption of 8.4 million tons. Although relatively small, Indonesia is the third largest coffee contributor in the world after Brazil and Vietnam.
Despite the production decline, chairman of the Specialty Coffee Association of Indonesia Leman Pahlavi remains confident that Indonesian coffee is still a target of global coffee aficionados. As with Indonesia, Brazil is also experiencing climate disruption that hampers its coffee harvest, "so some demand for coffee is transferred to Indonesia," he said at the Jakarta International Expo in Kemayoran, last weekend.
ALI HIDAYAT | ARTIKA RACHMI FARMITA (SURABAYA)
