Researchers are under renewed pressure to develop more weather-resistant varieties of coffee or growers will miss out on the high global prices of the commodity.
The domestic marketing season goes into a forced early break next Tuesday due to a biting shortage of crop mainly linked to climate change.
Traditionally, coffee volumes at the auction surge around March, but they peaked earlier this year after the country witnessed unusually heavy rains in the first months of last year.
Due to the unpredictable weather, coffee bushes flowered when they should not and produced coffee berries at different stages of maturity.
The weekly auction in Nairobi is now scheduled to close on April 19 — nearly three months before the traditional break in July — after supplies dwindled to about 15,000 bags per auction session instead of the optimal 30,000 bags.
Tight market
The early closure comes at a time when average global prices of coffee have hit a 34-year-high driven by rising demand.
Latest data from the International Coffee Organisation composite indicator — a key tool used to track global prices of the commodity— shows that as at March the average monthly price of coffee stood at $2.24 per pound, the highest in 34 years.
“Tight market fundamentals continue to support high price levels. Current prices are remunerative to growers and will help stimulate production growth in the future,” ICO said in a market report for April.
Local growers are however certain to miss on this windfall with analysts urging for the adoption of measures that would help mitigate the effects of climate change.
“Climate change clearly poses a serious challenge and the adoption of various strategies such as resistant varieties could help mitigate the effects,” Isaac Muchomba, secretary Kenya Coffee Traders Association (KCTA) said.
“It is difficult to handle the whole issue of climate change but its effects are real and affect key issues such as planning.”
The Coffee Research Foundation (CRF) identifies the use of breed varieties as a key strategy in taming the effects climate change.
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