Honduras, which caught fire on the island, is expected to export 2% less coffee this year than in previous years.

Coffee sales are expected to decline

Honduras is expected to export about 5.7 million bags of 60kg coffee between 2021 and 2022, down 2 per cent from the previous season, an official at the Honduran Coffee Institute (IHCAFE) said on Friday.

Honduras is Central America's largest coffee exporter, with sales of 60 kilograms of bagged coffee worth $5877542.08 in the 2020-2021 coffee season, about 2.1 per cent higher than expected in the new season, which runs from Friday to September next year, according to preliminary data from IHCAFE.

IHCAFE staff Napoleon Matute said in an interview that it is expected to export more than 7.5 million bags of 46 kg coffee beans (i.e. 5750000 bags of 60 kg coffee beans). Due to high humidity, coffee plants encounter difficulties in flowering, in addition to coffee leaf rust and active cyclone activity, coffee export forecasts are very conservative.

Due to the impact of coffee leaf rust on farms, the harvest in Honduras in 2020-2021 fell short of the initial estimate of 6281162.37 bags of 60 kg. Hurricanes Eta and Lota brought heavy rain to Honduras at the end of 2020, as well as destructive landslides, floods and other meteorological disasters.

The staff member also said that rainy conditions aggravated harmful rust on the plantation and affected the growth of coffee crops.

Food shortage

Families in the arid corridors of Honduras and coffee-growing areas in the central and eastern regions of Honduras will continue to experience a food crisis (IPC III), according to a report published on the Rescue Network (ReliefWeb) on October 1st. The reason for this is that lower-than-average grain production, restrictions on household stocks and increased dependence on the market, and reduced demand for labour on coffee farms have led to lower incomes.

In some rural areas, the demand for manual labor will peak from October to February next year, and families who depend on it will be given the opportunity to increase their income. Due to the relaxation of restrictions on the COVID-19 epidemic and the improvement of the implementation plan, the demand for labor is expected to increase compared with last year.

Nevertheless, the labor required for coffee and sugar cane harvests in Honduras is expected to be lower than average because of the 2020 hurricane and unstable rains in the current season.

Population loss

According to a report marked by the Rescue Network (ReliefWeb) on September 25 as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the scale of northward migration of mixed migration from Honduras tends to maintain the status quo or even increase.

According to an article on NPR on May 10 this year, more than 200 families in Honduras seek asylum across the southern border of the United States every day.

After droughts, floods and exploitation by lawbreakers, local farmers are unable to earn enough money to support their families. The lives of many Hondurans are on the verge of collapse, with 247000 internally displaced and as many as 2.5 million in need of emergency food aid; hurricanes Eta and Lota left many affected without shingles at the end of 2020, and continuous storm weather turned the Sura Valley into a huge lake.

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