Mexico City, Sept 30 - Mexico is renovating aging coffee farms in a push to increase flagging production and gain a reputation for high quality beans, the country's exporters association said on Monday.
Mexico's coffee output has declined more than 20 percent since 1990 to 4.2 million 60-kg bags in the 2007/08 season due to a slump in coffee prices at the beginning of this decade.
Although coffee prices have now recovered, Mexico's industry is not yet reaping the benefits, the head of the coffee exporters association, Alfredo Moises, told Reuters in an interview.
Coffee farms have been swallowed by urban development over the years or replanted with trees for commercial lumber, pushing Mexico down in the ranks of the world's largest coffee growers to fifth, behind India.
In traditional coffee growing states like Chiapas, Oaxaca and Veracruz, aid from the government is helping farmers to renovate aging fields, but land is too scarce to consider planting new coffee areas.
"The majority of plantations in Mexico have been producing coffee for 50 to 60 years and the trees are totally worn out," said Moises, whose family has grown coffee in Chiapas for nine decades.
The government helped farmers plant 10 million new plants last season in Chiapas, said Moises, and the agriculture ministry has said more aid is planned for next year.
Since coffee trees take three to four years to mature, there will be no immediate boost in production. Output is likely to remain steady until the new plants begin to produce.
"We have the opportunity for the Mexican coffee industry to return to what it was many years ago .. when coffee was the country's most important agricultural export," Moises said.
With the proper technical assistance on how best to manage the new trees, Mexico could produce more than 5 million bags of coffee per year, levels not seen since the early 1990s, he said.
Improved agricultural practices could also improve the quality of Mexico's coffee, since the strictly-hard-bean varieties that fetch premiums from international buyers are only a small percentage of the overall harvest.
Mexico's neighbors in Central America, like Guatemala and Costa Rica, are famed for their gourmet coffee, grown at high altitudes in narrowly defined regions. Most of Mexico's coffee goes into blends or into instant brews.