Tierra Verde Coffee Harvest Faces Drought as Rains Delay Again

The coffee plants in Diego's fields near the town of Oberá are smaller than they should be at this stage of the season. The leaves have a slight curl to them, a sign of water stress that Diego, who has farmed coffee for thirty years, has learned to read like a book. He stands at the edge of his plot in the early morning, when the air is still cool, and estimates that his yield will be perhaps twenty percent below what he harvested last year. "The rains should have come in June," he says. "It is now late July. The forecast says another dry week."

Across Tierra Verde's interior valleys, smallholder coffee farmers are reporting the same worry. The regional agricultural service recorded only forty-three millimeters of rainfall in June, against an average of ninety-two. July has been drier still. The combination has stressed the coffee plants at a critical moment: the flowers are setting, and water is essential to the development of the cherries that will become the beans. Without adequate moisture in the soil, the fruit will be smaller and fewer.

The drought is not unprecedented, but its timing is. Tierra Verde's coffee season typically depends on rains that arrive in May and June, followed by drier weather in July and August that allows the berries to ripen. This year, the pattern has shifted. The May rains were late and light. June brought brief showers but not the sustained moisture farmers need. Now, as the dry season should be settling in, farmers are caught between hope that more rain might come and the fear that it will not.