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
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
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
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
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
There are many
legends to how coffee
spread into Europe
Arrived strapped to
the belly of an Indian
smuggler who left
Mecca with the seeds
and initiated
agricultural expansion
of the coffee bean into
Europe
For about a half a
century Arabia
supplied Europe with
all coffee consumed
and was considered a
luxury item by British
elite
Coffee was supplied to
the Europeans by the
old Dutch East India
Company that traded
with the Arabian ports
on the Red Sea
Expansion of Coffee into European
Colonies
In 1690, the expansion would
soon reach European colonies and the Dutch introduced the first
European owned coffee estates on colonial Java
From Java it made its way to
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
Coffee was then introduced into
Jamaica by the British and Martinique by the French
Coffee then spread to the rest of
Latin America
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
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: 1. Territorial expansion
2. Movement of settlers
3. Expanding world market-strive to increase production and profit 4. The creation of class conflicts and the creation of the coffee elite
The Coffee Elite
The coffee elite formed in the midst of the
19
th
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?
1.
Lawless military regimes that make family ties the only
safe way to gain political power
2.
Absence of mass parties and effective parliamentary
institutions
3.
Limited development of higher education, professional
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
Coffee and the Ecosystem
Traditionally a shade growncrop 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 ingrown 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
