21/10/2026
As the harvest enters its closing chapter, we’ve seen a lot of changes across many of the farms we work with, and one central theme keeps coming up: the El Nino phenomenon and increasingly unpredictable weather patterns.
In short, El Nino occurs when the trade winds that normally blow across the Pacific from South America towards Asia weaken. This allows warmer ocean water to spread eastwards, changing wind and rainfall patterns across the world and disrupting expected seasonal weather conditions. The result can be excessive rainfall in some regions and drought and extreme heat in others.
Over the last 18 months, many of the key stages of coffee production, from flowering and cherry development to processing and drying, have been affected by periods of extreme heat and excessive rainfall.
The overall impact has been lower yields on many farms, but producers can experience losses at every stage.
Excessive heat and drought reduce soil moisture, placing stress on coffee trees and affecting flowering, fruit development and cherry maturation. Sudden changes in moisture conditions can also contribute to cherry splitting, increasing the risk of pests and other quality problems.
And that’s before the coffee has even been harvested.
Once producers have absorbed some of these losses, prolonged rainfall creates another set of challenges during processing and drying.
Open air drying and solar dryers have been particularly affected. Drying takes longer, moisture becomes harder to manage and the risk of unwanted microbial activity, uneven drying and defects increases.
We’ve seen producers constructing additional solar dryers, where they can afford to do so, while others have made larger investments in mechanical dryers.
More unpredictable conditions mean additional labour, longer drying times and greater costs, or another round of losses if the coffee doesn’t meet the required quality standards.
The picture of the coffee flowers alongside cherries is one that sums up this whole episode as even the coffee trees are confused. They’re experiencing weather conditions to allow them to flower while they’re still in cherry development stage.
