WASHINGTON: El Salvador coffee exports rose 26 percent in November, the Salvadoran Coffee Council said last week, as plantations recovered from a fungal outbreak known as roya and a drought. El Salvador shipped 4,487 60-kilogram sacks in November, compared with 3,565 bags during the same month in the previous harvest. Exports during the first two months of the 2016/17 harvest totalled 15,084 bags, up 37.5 percent from the same period in the previous cycle.
The coffee season in Central America and Mexico, which together produce about a fifth of the world’s arabica beans, runs from October through September. El Salvador, one of Central America’s smaller coffee producers, has been one of the hardest hit by the spread of roya, also known as coffee leaf rust, over the past couple of seasons. The country has also struggled with the effects of a regional drought.
