MILAN – The Agriculture Ministry’s crop supply agency Conab said yesterday that the country’s private sector held 15.2m bags of coffee stocks as of March 31st 2014, up 9.2% from the 13.9m bags a year earlier.
The figure is the highest since 2007 when Brazil held more than 17m bags.
This shows that that farmers in the world’s largest producer have stockpiled beans after the worst drought in decades raised concerns about supplies.
Arabica coffee stocks account for 14.1 million bags. Inventories of conilon were just over 1 million bags.
About 11 million bags are held in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil’s biggest producer of the commodity.
The government also had 1.65 million bags in public stocks.
