Mexico City, Oct. 11 - Honduras' new 2007-08 harvest is expected to yield up to 3.68 million 60-kilogram bags in production, up 2.1% on the recently completed 2006-07 crop, a top official at the Honduran Coffee Institute, or Ihcafe, said Wednesday.
This compares to total production in Honduras' 2006-07 crop cycle (October-September) of 3.603 million bags, Ihcafe General Director David Valeriano told Dow Jones Newswires by telephone from Tegucigalpa.
Valeriano cited good weather and improved farm management as the main factors behind what is expected to become the third consecutive year that Honduran coffee producers increase output on the last crop cycle.
It also shows an important recovery from the 2000-04 coffee crisis when production slumped in producing countries around the world after prices fell to historical lows and growers abandoned fields and let cherries rot on trees.
Total Honduran coffee exports from the new 2007-08 crop, for which physical harvesting is scheduled to start in earnest in November, are expected to rise 2.5% to as much as 3.297 million bags, the Ihcafe director said.
This compares to exports in the 2006-07 cycle of 3.216 million bags, which included an unspecified volume of carry-over stocks from past crops.
Valeriano also said that a government-supported program to increase average yields through higher tree densities were starting to show results, and that production is expected to grow continuously over the next five years.