Critical Brazil Arabica Crop Alert was Identified Early in Remote Sensing Data

Want to see a live version of the data described in this article and keep track of the latest remote sensing data? Book a demo of the Taka Insights platform.

A prolonged drought compromised the 2021/22 and 2022/23 Brazilian Arabica coffee crop. Those that did not have a keen knowledge of the crop lifecycle failed to recognize the invisible damage being done to the 2022/23 crop and focused attention only on the 2021/22 crop visible on the trees. This article guides the reader through the phenological phases of crop development to gain awareness. Taka Insights carefully monitors a wide range of highly detailed data sources to identify and pinpoint weather conditions that alert users to the prognosis for the production of coffee (and other agricultural crops) as part of the GrowthView feature on their platform. This past year there were extreme climatic conditions in Brazil, which compromised agricultural production, including coffee. With Brazil being by far the largest producer of coffee worldwide, the market implications were tremendous and are being felt through the global supply chain as buyers need to adjust for the crop shortfall. Identifying and catching these climatic problems gives an edge to those that need to worry about the price and supply implications in managing their businesses. Taka Insights understands these ramifications and developed tools to help understand where risks may arise.

Understanding The Phenological Lifecycle Of The Crop Is Key

What is sometimes not recognized by market participants is the true lifecycle and development of the crop, with the timing of unusual stress on the trees, impacting not one but two crops simultaneously. To better understand what has happened and make projections about the crop outcome, one can use remote sensing technology as a baseline comparison from one year to the next.

One of the most commonly used indicators for remote sensing of the vegetative growth in a region is by comparisons of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) which quantifies vegetative growth by measuring the difference between near-infrared (which vegetation reflects strongly) and red light (which vegetation absorbs). The ranges of NDVI fall between -1 and +1. Negative values generally suggest water and the higher the index the denser the green vegetation. An NDVI of near-zero is usually a sign of an urban area that may have a park or tree-lined streets.

Are The Arabica Coffee Trees Healthy Or Not?

What to look for? When vegetation is healthy it has a higher amount of chlorophyll that would reflect more of the green light, near-infrared, compared to other wavelengths while at the same time absorbing more of the red and blue light. The greener or healthier the vegetation, the more reflection you have of green and less so of red, resulting in a higher index value. Seeing the changes in vegetation over time provides an insight into the health of the tree, but this must also be corrected or understood for normal transitions between rainy and dry periods (seasonal changes). A declining or increasing value may not be an alert that something is wrong climatically but a regular annual occurrence. Therefore, it is important to consider what is the norm or average for a given region. This then can be aligned with the crop development cycle to further understand, the potential impacts when one year deviates from the average or other seasons, either positively or negatively.

There are some points that are considered when using NDVI for a dense tree crop, such as coffee, as the satellite may reach only the top one-third of the canopy and could miss bare branches at the bottom or mid-section. Using NDVI in conjunction with other primary indicators, such as rainfall and temperature is therefore important and is the protocol used at Taka Insights.

Crop Development

It is important to consider the various stages of crop development, which are more complex than just the flowering (onset of rainy season) and harvesting (onset of the dry season) periods of the crop. The first step happens long before blossoms ever form. Depending on the time of year, a tree is either conserving energy or utilizing stored carbohydrates and the tree smartly makes decisions about its capacity to do so and adjusts accordingly. At any given time, two crops are being impacted by this: the current crop in development and the next crop at the start of formation. While a season may be considered as a single 12-month time span from the start to the harvest and through the marketing year of the forward 12 months (ex: July 2021-June 2022), the development period is even longer and starts simultaneously with the branch growth and vegetative gems within. The reality is that it takes 21-24 months to complete a full cycle, which could be broken down into six phases with the first and second phase part of phenology year one and the third through sixth phase occurring in the second phenology year. Market participants traditionally only focus on year two or phases 3-6, as they are most visible.

First Phase: Vegetative Stage

During the first phase of year one, there is a 7-month period from roughly September to March (corresponding with the Brazilian spring and summer months) where the tree is awakened from dormancy with the start of the rainy season. The branches will grow new vegetation with more nodes and foliage forming and more critically inside the branch there is also activity with the floral gems starting to form. The more rainfall, the better the growth will be as a positive beginning for the following season’s crop. At the same time, during the first four months (Sep-Dec) of the first phase, it is also the start of the third phase for year two of the next harvest. This is the phase that traders take most notice of, where the tree is starting to flower and form chumbinhos or pellets that fix to the tree and start to slowly expand from pinhead to eraser size emerging from the ovary of the flower. The NDVI typically increases during this period. The blossoming of the tree doesn’t expend much energy but growing leaves and branches do. Both actions can be done simultaneously. While the leaves grow (usually 30-40 days) they do not provide energy to the tree but utilize carbohydrates. Therefore, they provide no benefit to the setting of the flowers for the crop formation.

Second Phase: Fruit Development

Phase two of the first year (April-August or autumn and winter), is when the days start to grow shorter and cooler with less sunlight, and the tree starts to enter a period of dormancy. Rainfall is also reduced. Within the branch, the extremely important induction process is beginning with the trees starting to differentiate the vegetative gems that formed in phase one into buds within, which will then push outwards with the onset of rains after the winter period ends. It is during this induction period when the tree is making the decision whether the buds will reproduce for fruit or develop into leaves. Since it is not visible, the importance of this stage in the future crops’ formation is easily overlooked or not considered as a clue to the size of the next crop. Instead, the extent of flowering is the benchmark that is used with expressive flowering induced by heavy rainfall, a positive indication. However, this can be rather misleading if the weather during the months when the buds are forming within the branch is not conducive and the tree is instead put under increased stress. The tree would be given a signal to grow more leaves than fruit for survival. If the rainy season has a delayed onset or excessive heat then these buds can also be damaged. All of these critical steps happen before the rainy season gets underway.

NDVI Can Show When The Tree Is Starting To Suffer Or Benefit From Climatic Conditions

To illustrate what has happened this past year, Taka Insights has examined the NDVI for the full life cycle of the 2020/21 crop, which was a record Arabica crop of about 50 million bags, the drought-impacted 2021/22 harvest, which fell to between 30-35 million bags, and the early stage of development for what will be the 2022/23 harvest with the flowering of this crop now completed. The rainfall totals and vegetative health for the entire 2020/21 season were exceptional and above the 10-year average. It therefore would be no surprise that the resulting crop had high yields that were very uniform. Rains fell when necessary and the winter was dry leading to a rapid harvest. The 2021/22 flowering was compromised because of the onset of the prolonged drought. It was during this time that the branches also failed to grow as much as they normally would. This left the trees with fewer nodes to flower from and the internode spacing was reduced. It would have taken ideal conditions to compensate for this, but below normal precipitation persisted, leading to a continued decline in the NDVI. Rather than the 2022/23 crop being able to recover fully from the drought, conditions worsened instead. From May onwards the NDVI was below the 10-year average but also substantially below that for the same point in the development of the 2020/21 record harvest. The trees were under stress during the critical period when the tree was taking a decision to produce fruit or flowers during the induction phase. Conditions worsened with three bouts of cold weather in July as the frosts caused further dehydration and a sharp lowering in the NDVI, falling further behind the vegetative health of two years ago and the 10-year average. The delay in the rainy season and warm temperatures then put the trees under further stress in September, whereas normally the start of rains would begin to restore vegetative health. July and August (sixth phase) are a period when the trees normally shed some leaves, leading to a decline in the NDVI, but this year was far greater than usual.

To see a live version of the data in this graph and new data as it becomes available book a demo of the Taka Insights platform.

The poor vegetative health, as shown in the NDVI, suggests a below normal success rate for the future crop with conditions worse than any time in the past decade. This is contrary to what would be expected given the prolific flowering that occurred due to extreme rainfall. The observations made by the NDVI are in alignment with actual field conditions seen by Taka Insights Co-Founder, Judy Ganes, who personally visited the key Brazilian coffee regions in December 2020, and then in February, July, and October 2021 to assess the crop prospects. The data supports her findings that the 2022/23 crop was compromised early on from reduced vegetative growth and fewer nodes per tree to heavy defoliation from ongoing stress and then post flowering, empty branches despite heavy blossoms, or incomplete rosettas (number of fruits in early formation) around the node and expectation that insufficient foliage would cause an above-average drop of the pellets.

In Conclusion, excellent conditions will be needed once again for the NDVI to return to normal. The longer it sits at below-average levels, one has to consider the negative effect this will have on the 2022/23 crop but also the early outlook for 2023/24. Not all of Brazil’s Arabica area is impacted uniformly and Taka Insights understands this, which is why the GrowthView model monitors data from 1200 Arabica coffee farms throughout Brazil. This helps alert Taka Insights users quickly to a potential problem brewing as well as the scope this may have on the crop.

Would you like to stay up-to-date about new articles from Taka Insights? Leave us your email address and we will send you an update when we publish a new article.