The Finest Coffee in the World - Essay Example

Coffee The tree of coffee is a shrub that has an average life of 50 to 60 years. This tree has a straight trunk. The flowers start to bloom in the third year of the growth of the plant, though it generally takes up to five years to yield profits. There are as many as sixty varieties of coffee trees, but the Coffea Arabica and Coffea canephora are the two species that are the most widely traded all across the world. These plants generally grow at high altitudes. Regions suitable for the growth of coffee trees in terms of humidity and temperature include but are not limited to Africa, Pacific Islands, South Asia, and South America.

The finest coffee in the world that is grown in the shade instead of sunlight is found in India. The number of coffee-growers in India is around 250,000, and 98 percent of them grow it on a small scale. White flowers appear on the coffee plants and have an average life of three days before maturing into seeds. The duration between the fruit’s blooming and maturing stages varies from one region to another and from type to type. This duration for Arabica is around seven months whereas it is almost nine months for Robusta.

The coffee plant needs around 90 percent humidity and 70 degrees Fahrenheit of temperature to grow (Smestad, 2012). Coffee plants may catch fungus if not treated for it. There are two basic methods of processing coffee; the dry processing method and the wet processing method. In the former, coffee beans are dried in the sun whereas, in the latter, they are fomented and washed. The power of coffee as a commodity is immense. “Coffee began as an export commodity in Yemen before 1500” (Topik and Samper, n.d., p. 6). Today, coffee is one of the most traded products around the world and is the largest food item imported by the US.

The coffee commodity chain comprises producers, workers, exporting agencies, importing countries, roasters, and shops. This is how they reach the consumers. A lot of developing countries depend upon coffee as the prime export item. “Some 20 million families in 50 countries now work directly in the cultivation of coffee; an estimated 11 million hectares of the world’s farmland are dedicated to coffee cultivation” (Coffee News, 2008). Developing countries are the main exporters of coffee. Coffee is chiefly exported by Brazil and India.

While the consumers of coffee are largely spread all across the world, the US is the biggest consumer of coffee in the world. Brazil, Colombia, and Vietnam make more than 50 percent of the total amount of coffee in the world (Scholer, 2006). The main players of the coffee industry are Nestle, Starbucks, and Kraft Foods. Of the three, “Starbucks is the only company that buys large quantities of coffee, certified by C.A.F.E Practices, Fairtrade and/or Organic, and has set a clear goal of 100% sustainable coffee, by 2015” (Botero et al., 2011, p. 40).

Coffee is of huge socio-economic significance both for the developed and the developing countries which are generally the exporters. The Trade of coffee is beneficial both for the economy of the developing countries and for the development of good relations among the trading countries.