Sao Paulo, Sept 14 - After raining throughout the harvest and spoiling its quality, showers will concentrate over Brazil's main coffee areas in the coming days, as if to break the will of any farmer still hoping to gather the last beans.
"The most significant rainfall, with a volume of no more than 15 (millimeters) will reach the Mogiana region of Sao Paulo and the south of Minas Gerais," private forecaster Somar said in a daily coffee weather bulletin on Monday.
These areas are some of the country's most productive. Minas Gerais is the top coffee state in the world's top grower with most production concentrated in the south. Mogiana is in northern Sao Paulo, where most of the state's coffee grows.
"In other areas the rain will be more isolated and in smaller volume," Somar said, adding that all regions would turn dry from Wednesday until Sunday when another cold front brings the risk of more precipitation.
Cooperatives in these areas say it would now be pointless to try and gather the small amounts still left in the fields in these wet conditions as the harvest draws to a close.
The weather has been particularly cruel to Brazil's arabica growers this year, raising hopes with plentiful showers during the crop's development, only to rain on the harvested beans once they were drying outdoors, causing a lot of it to spoil.
The rain returned intermittently throughout the harvest period, leaving only short gaps for farmers to do what they could to dry the beans.
Affected beans will be sold as cheaper rio or riado, not as the more valuable "fine cup" grade.
The 2009/10 coffee harvest has been estimated at 39 million to 43.5 million bags according to government and private estimates. Coffee damaged by the recent rain will need to be blended with unaffected beans to be marketable but it is still fit for consumption, buyers say.