A Brief History of Coffee
The story of coffee is a fascinating one. It started more than a thousand years ago in the hills of Ethiopia, where a goat herder observed that the flock under his watch became giddy after munching on certain red berries. As a responsible goat herder, he was concerned for the health of his flock, and so tried one of the intriguing cherries himself. What a discovery! The goat herder, feeling the typical effects of caffeine, could not wait to spread the news of this unknown fruit.
Ethiopian gourmands eventually learned to roast, grind, and brew the seed of this fruit from the Coffea Arabica plant, and the country eventually developed a rich tradition around the production, consumption, and sale of coffee. They managed to keep the coffee plant from being exported for several hundred years, despite many attempts to smuggle plants out of the country to Europe. The “French Connection” proved too crafty, however, and a live plant was eventually smuggled out of the country to Europe, where it was nurtured, grew, and multiplied within the tropical climate of King Louis XIV’s greenhouse.
In the centuries that followed, coffee gradually made its way around the world, to be planted in the countries straddling the equator, between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, and to be consumed by people, most of whom live in cooler climates where coffee is not grown. Consequently, coffee has become one of the most exported commodities, second only to oil.
The history of coffee within the past two hundred years has been intertwined with the histories of both the coffee drinking and coffee producing countries. Coffee is grown in many countries with unstable political situations . Coffee supplies have been interrupted by political upheavals, breakdowns in social and economic infrastructures, unexpected freezes, too much rain, too little rain, etc. For example, coffee production in Zimbabwe has shriveled from over 400 coffee farms to just a handful from 2006 to 2009, due to political changes there. Coffee farmers in some Central American countries must surround themselves with armored vehicles to protect against bandits while driving their processed coffee to the ports for export.
Demand for coffee fluctuates with world politics as well. For instance, coffee roasters in the U.S. invented a thing called instant coffee so as to keep our WWII troops supplied with the essential beverage. Coffee quality drastically eroded in the U.S. during the 1950’s through the 1970’s when big coffee companies competed fiercely against one another for the consumer’s nickel per cup. When a big freeze in Brazil slashed coffee supplies, coffee companies developed the technology to stretch a bean farther than ever before, just so they would not have to raise the price of coffee at the grocery store.
The economics of coffee changed entirely beginning in the 1970’s with Alfred Peet and Peet’s Coffee in Berkeley, CA, and then the with establishment of Starbucks in Portland, OR. Both set out to educate the public about fresh roasted specialty coffee. Serious coffee drinkers, when given the chance to buy better tasting coffee, were willing to pay more. In the decades after that, up until the present time, increasing numbers of coffee consumers have demanded specialty coffee in independent coffee shops, specialty grocery stores, and restaurants.
