With petroleum extraction dropping year over year, Colombia is leaning heavier on its other commodities to make up the balance. With that context, attributed to a delay in the blooming period of coffee plants in the first semester of 2017, today’s announcement that coffee production in Colombia dropped a 9% is another blow to the struggling economy. The production in June of 2017 was of 63 million kilograms of coffee, in comparison to the 69 million kilograms produced in June of 2016, according to the National Federation of Coffee Producers.
This is not the first drop in coffee prices this year, however, and this drop was considered to be less severe that the one registered in the past two months of the present year.
When comparing the months of January to June of 2017 and 2016, the results show an overall decrease of 3% in the present level of production, from 390 million kilograms in 2016 to 384 million kilograms in 2017.
The leader of the National Federation of Coffee Producers, Roberto Vélez Vallejo expressed to Colombian newspaper “El Colombiano” his concern with regard to production in the second semester, as abnormal, heavy rains have fallen in the country’s coffee regions and the plants haven’t flowered showing, even now, no signs of fruit development whatsoever.
