Coffee around the world

The origins of coffee production may be as murky as a double espresso but whether it was in the Yemen or Somalia is literally lost in the mists of time. However, there is no doubt about where it is cultivated today. More than fifty countries, across an equatorial band produce 100 million bags of coffee per year. A bag is specific measurement. Just as a barrel of oil is 42 US gallons a bag of coffee weighs 60 kilos. That is an awful lot of coffee but with World demand running at about one billion cups of coffee per day it is needed. Consequently, it is no surprise that coffee, with 25 million people involved in its production, is seen as second only to oil in terms of its importance to the global economy.

 

 

 

The so-called ‘bean-belt’ lies within the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer and the best climate is one which offers steady amounts of sun and rain with an average temperature around 20 degrees centigrade (70 degrees Fahrenheit) . There are two kinds of coffee tree. Arabica is traditionally the more popular, representing around 70% of world production, and produces better quality coffee while the more bitter beans from the Robusta tree make up the rest. The one advantage that Robusta has over its rival is that it will grow from seedling to maturity in two to three years while the Arabica needs nearly twice as long.

 

As the song says ‘They’ve got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil’ but is hard to believe there wasn’t any growing there 300 years ago. In those days countries liked to keep a monopoly on the trade of such rare commodities as coffee and the French had established a coffee-growing colony in Guinea, along the West African coast. The story goes that the Emperor of Brazil sent an envoy to Guinea to bring home the beans but the only way he could succeed was by charming the French Governor’s wife to help him smuggle out some seeds and shoots. Today Brazil produces more than a quarter of the world’s coffee but the fastest growing producer is Vietnam which recently replaced Columbia as the second largest exporter. There are many other smaller producers across the equatorial world from Togo and Thailand to Tanzania. In fact, coffee was only introduced to East Africa just over 100 years ago when seeds were imported to Kenya from La Reunion in the Indian Ocean. Ironically, Kenya borders Somalia where coffee production began hundreds of years before but to arrive at the foothills of Kilimanjaro the coffee bean had to travel all the way around the world.

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