Brazil Coffee Inventories Fell 31% in 2005

Brazil, the world's biggest coffee producer and exporter, said coffee inventories fell 31 percent at the end of last year from a year earlier as rising international demand led farmers to boost sales.

Coffee stockpiles fell to 948,402 metric tons at the end of last year, the government's statistics agency said.

Brazilian coffee growers have avoided increasing planting and have reduced stockpiles in past years after a glut in 2000 and 2001 led prices to slump, the University of Sao Paulo's Margarete Boteon said.

'Producers have been more wary of heading for an overproduction situation,' said Boteon, an analyst at the University of Sao Paulo's commodity research unit in Piracicaba, Brazil.

The trend for reducing stocks instead of boosting planting may well continue. Read More...