Nairobi, Nov. 20 - Coffee berry disease will cut Kenya's coffee harvest in the 2007/08 crop year by 20 to 30 percent, based on internal forecasts, the Coffee Board of Kenya said on Tuesday.
"Initially we had projected a slightly higher output, something to do with 53,000-54,000 metric tonnes. So far I am looking at something between a 20 percent, 25 percent, 30 percent drop, and that is quite substantial," Bernard Gichovi, a senior board member of the Coffee Board of Kenya, told Reuters in an interview.
"The weather changed so much towards the end of the (06/07) season ... and that brought a severe CBD (coffee berry disease) attack that drastically reduced the crop we expected to realise this year."
This is the first time the board issued a forecast for 2007/08 (Oct-Sept) crop year.
Final production figures for the 2006/07 crop year are yet to be released, but Coffee Board of Kenya (CBK) had earlier estimated production of 52,463 tonnes compared with 48,297 tonnes in 2005/06.
Gichovi said prolonged and intense cold weather in growing areas of central Kenya -- which account for 70 percent of the crop -- had encouraged the disease and hampered flowering.
Kenya's early crop is harvested before July while the main crop is picked between July and December.
Although not a big coffee producer, Kenya is famous globally for its high quality arabica beans grown mainly near Mount Kenya and used by roasters to blend coffees of other origins.
Kenya's coffee sector, which had its highest-ever output of 130,000 tonnes in the 1987/88 crop year, has been recovering in the past four years after reforms to turn around almost two decades of decline.
Already heavily in debt due to poor earnings and high production costs, many smallholder farmers have had little access to affordable credit, which analysts say has been a major catalyst for the slide in production.
"We are not so happy about it. This is because there is so much that we have been trying to do to get the sector out of the doldrums. So when something drastic happens to put us back, it is really bad news," Gichovi said.
The government has written off a 5.3 billion shilling ($81.16 million) debt owed by cooperative societies and unveiled plans to provided 3.5 billion shillings for credit to buy farm inputs or equipment.
It also has allowed direct sales between Kenyan farmers and roasters abroad --- which was previously illegal -- to raise farmers' income by eliminating a long line of middlemen.
Gichovi added that the board, along with the Coffee Research Foundation, was working to distribute more coffee seedlings, although demand still outstripped supply as farmers in other parts of the country took up coffee growing and shifted away from crops like maize and sugarcane.
"Actually we are facing a problem of the planting material. The demand is higher than the supply and the Coffee Research Foundation is working so hard to meet the demand of planting material," Gichovi added.
Coffee is among Kenya's top foreign exchange earners along with tourism, tea and horticulture.