Coffee

Origins of Coffee
 Coffee drinking first
became popular in Yemen
in the 15th century
 Coffee derives its name
from Arabic
 Qahwah is the Arabic word
for coffee and Turkish
influence resulted in
pronunciation as qahveh
 Italian origin? Caffe but is
derived from Turkish,
which derives from Arabic
 Qahwah is the name given
to coffee in Arabic but
means ‘wine’
Yemenite Sufi Circles
 Coffee first became
popular in Yemenite Sufi
circles who began to refer
to coffee as wine because
like wine it also dulls the
appetite and therefore was
called qahwah
 Coffee became the
replacement for wine and
Sufi’s transferred the
meaning “wine” to
“coffee” and introduced it
further into Cairo
 Coffee was spread to
Turkey through the Sufi’s
who used the coffee to
help keep them stay
awake during devotional
exercises performed all
night
 Coffee’s True Origin
 Coffee is not a native
plant to Arabia
 It is a native plant of
Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
and can be found
growing wild and
cultivated
 From Ethiopia it was
brought to Arabia and
a variety of legends
exist to how coffee
was discovered
 Coffee Legends
 Around 800 A.D. coffee was said to
be discovered by an Ethiopian
goatherd whose name was Kaldi
 Kaldi noticed his goats had more
energy and were dancing from shrub
to shrub eating the cherry-red
berries that contained the coffee
bean
 He tried the beans himself and soon
found himself frolicking with his flock
 The Coffee Plant
 Is a woody perennial evergreen, that
belongs the Rubiaceae family, there
are two main species cultivated today
 Coffee arabica-accounts for 70-80% of
the world’s production
 Coffee canephora- known as Robusta
coffee and is more resilient than
Arabica shrubs, but does not produce
the same taste that is considered
inferior to that of Arabica
 Coffee bean development-video
 Where is Coffee Grown?
 The top ten coffee producers are highlighted in
yellow
 Brazil makes up a third of this production and is
by far the largest producer in the coffee
producing market
 The Bean Belt- bounded by the Tropics of Cancer
and Capricorn, coffee is grown within the Tropics
 How did coffee get to all these locations?
 The Spread of Coffee
 Coffee began to leave Africa via two
trade routes, one located at Masawa,
a city in Ethiopia located on the Red
Sea and down the Blue Nile to
Khartoum
 Coffee is not said to have spread
outside of Africa and Arabia until the
1600s and Arabia was known to
make export beans infertile by
boiling them
 Coffee in Europe
 For about a half a
century Arabia
supplied Europe
with all coffee
consumed and was
 There are many considered a luxury
legends to how item by British elite
coffee spread into
Europe
 Coffee was supplied
to the Europeans by
 Arrived strapped to the old Dutch East
the belly of an India Company that
Indian smuggler traded with the
who left Mecca with Arabian ports on
the seeds and the Red Sea
initiated
agricultural
 Expansion of Coffee into
European Colonies
 In 1690, the expansion would  Coffee was then introduced
soon reach European colonies into Jamaica by the British
and the Dutch introduced the and Martinique by the French
first European owned coffee  Coffee then spread to the rest
estates on colonial Java of Latin America
 From Java it made its way to  Shift in coffee ideology
Sumatra and the Philippines
 Cultivation of coffee was a
success in these new areas
because unlike wine and tea,
coffee can be raised with little
difficulty and required little
help from the Europeans
 Coffee was also grown in
Dutch gardens in Amsterdam,
these plants launched the
introduction of coffee into the
Dutch colony of Surinam
 Shift in Coffee Ideology
 During early cultivation coffee was
restricted to remote parts of Yemen and
was still considered as a resource for
merchants who could profit and
governments who profited through taxes
 Social and political consequences were
few and consisted of:
 Coffee in Islam?
 Concerns with coffee houses as centers for
conspiracy and deception
 Shift
 However, this changed
with the introduction
of coffee into
European colonies and
control of production
by commercial capital
 The colonists coerced
the peoples of the
colonies into
producing coffee or
used African slave
labor
 Latin America
 Produces more than
twice as much coffee
as the rest of the
world combined
 Before, this time
Arabia produced all of
the world’s coffee and
today only yields
about one hundred
and sixtieth percent of
this production, but
yet produces more
than it ever had
 Coffee Century

 The history of coffee in Latin America begins in the late 18th

century when the first coffee trees were introduced
 This was followed by the coffee century in Latin America
and entered into a coffee period that was accompanied by
a dramatic increase in the world trade of coffee
 The consumption of coffee in the U.S. increased from 3lbs
in 1830 to 10lbs in 1900, and 16lbs in 1960

 With this Expansion we see:

6. Territorial expansion
7. Movement of settlers
8. Expanding world market-strive to increase production and
profit
9. The creation of class conflicts and the creation of the coffee
elite
 The Coffee Elite
 The coffee elite formed in the midst
of the 19th century coffee dynasties
and was built at the expense of much
of the rest of the population
 Resembles those of the colonial
aristocracies
 Focused in Central America in the
countries of El Salvador, Costa Rica,
and Nicaragua
 Coffee Elite…
 The coffee elite was made up of aristocratic
families of pure decent and new European
immigrants
 Around two or three families control the entire
coffee industry
 How do these families remain in power?
4. Lawless military regimes that make family ties
the only safe way to gain political power
5. Absence of mass parties and effective
parliamentary institutions
6. Limited development of higher education,
professional education could only be acquired
abroad
 Transnational Corporations
 Market is controlled by 4 coffee
companies
 Kraft foods, Nestle, Proctor and
Gamble, and Sara lee
 These companies produce the major
coffee brands: Maxwell House,
Nescafe, Folgers, and Douwe Egberts
 Nestlé's instant coffee alone is
consumed at a rate of 3,900 cups of
coffee every second
 Instant Coffee
 Latin American countries are attempting to make
changes to respond to the growing instant coffee
market
 Three Latin American countries (Brazil, Columbia,
and Ecuador) have become significant exporters
of instant coffee
 Benefits from this change over have been limited
because of transnational corporations
 Local Exporters face many challenges:
 Inability to fund large advertising campaigns
 Compete with brand names
 Distribute to large market
 Coffee and the Ecosystem
 Traditionally a shade
grown crop that is grown
under a canopy of trees
 These shade trees provide
an excellent source of
biodiversity
 The new modern system
however, emphasizes the
use of pesticides and the
increase in chemical inputs
to retain high yields
 Sun plantations-ultimately
more prone to water and
soil runoff and long term
damage of the soil
 Benefits of Shade Grown
Coffee
 Deforestation is a constant issue in
many areas of Latin America
 Destroying the habitat of many
species and much biodiversity
 Shade grown coffee plantations
provide refuge for forest biota that
has been displaced due to
deforestation
Problems in Coffee Growing
 70% of the world’s coffee
in grown on farms of less
than ten hectares and the
vast majority is grown on
family plots of between
one and five hectares
 Coffee is grown in the wide
tropical and sub-tropical
belt around the Equator,
including some of the
countries who face severe
development challenges
 Fair Trade-Offers Hope
 Small landholders struggle to feed their
families from the income they make from
coffee alone
 Peris Mwihaki coffee grower in Kenya-In
recent years her coffee cherries have
brought her no more than 2-3% of the final
selling price of Kenyan AA coffee on
supermarket shelves in the North
 “Payments don’t reach us here in the
hills,” “Peris explained. “The farm is just as
hard work as it ever was, we’re getting
nothing in return”
Fair Trade…
 Commercial businesses
that develop relationships
with farmers and are
interested in improving the
lives of those farmers from
which they buy from
 Commitment is to pay
farmers a fair price and
what they deserve fro
producing that product
 The price must cover the
costs of production and
must also be stable
 Fair trade coffee sales are
growing and in 2001 coffee
grew by 12 per cent
The End!