Brazilian Coffee Crop at Risk

Brazilian Coffee Crop at Risk as Trees Flower Early (Update1)

By Carlos Caminada

Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Coffee trees in Brazil's Minas Gerais state are flowering earlier than usual because of above- average rainfall, threatening to reduce next year's crop, according to the world's biggest coffee cooperative.

About 20 percent to 30 percent of the coffee trees in the south of Minas Gerais, Brazil's biggest coffee-producing region, are flowering a month early, said Joaquim Goulart, chief agronomist at the Guaxupe Region Coffee Cooperative, known as Cooxupe.

``It's very serious,'' Goulart said in a telephone interview from Guaxupe, in the south of the state. ``It could badly hinder the next harvest.''

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