Geographical Expansion Of Coffee Cultivation: History And Current Overview

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2. Understand some of the main historical and contemporary contexts of environmental issues in Australia and their connection to global events and perspectives
3. Identify, and critically examine, key environmental issues
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7. Be able to critically evaluate management options for addressing environmental, social and sustainability challenges

Geographical Expansion of Coffee Cultivation

It has been found that there is an increasing demand for coffee in the existing world with the growing needs of brewed coffee in major areas. However, Coffee brewing is increasing in Australia. In this context, the number of coffee beans extractors has increased from 100 in 2005 to 355 in the year 2017 (De Janvry 2015). This path shows that the increase was comparatively slow and punctuated. However, during the course of 1980, the country witnessed a rush of craft coffee producing startup with only 34% of an organisation that increased to 43% within a period of 2 years (Andorfer and Liebe 2015). However, the geographical expansion of coffee begins from the different location that stretches across Africa and South America.  Based on the historical evidence and changes that took place in its production due to the growing political and social instability is presented in this study.

Coffee can be tracked from almost the beginning of the early nineteenth century when it was seen in the hills region of Ethiopia. From the Ethiopian region, coffee cultivation spread across Egypt as well as Yemen. In this aspect, it was in Arabia where coffee seeds were roasted and brewed for the first time. Thereafter, by the end of the 15^th century, coffee extraction and cultivation reached across the rest of the world including the Middle East, Persia, Africa and southern America (Hernandez?Aguilera et al. 2018). However, historically it has been found that the discovery of coffee was done by a goatherd named Kaldi who recognised goats to have been chewing coffee from the bushes after which he tasted followed by invigorating and stimulating taste.

From then, the humble origin of Coffee starts from Africa with the cultivations moving from east to west eventually it formed a rough belt across tropic of cancer and tropic of Capricorn. These growing regions deliver a moderate amount of sunshine and rainfall with a steady temperature of 70 degrees Faren-height with rich porous soil. In return of this climate, coffee tree yields bean those coffee beans that are the way of economic sustainability for several countries and for about 25 million of community members (Elliott and Frickel 2015). Amongst all the natural commodities coffee has a high monetary value that is usually surpassed by oil.

Due to the varying altitudinal features of extraction and cultivating coffee in different regions, processing and origin of coffee have a crucial role to play in the development of coffee flavours. There are several differences that are found in coffee that grown in same portions of the world. In this context, there can be even dramatic differences in the flavour of coffee that can vary from year to year at the same organisation (Kjellberg et al. 2015).

Geographical Expansion of Coffee Extraction

There are two major varieties of coffee trees that are found such as Arabica and Robusta. In this context, Arabica coffee trees are usually more fragile and need to be cultivated at a higher elevated area. These, in turn, yield a little number of beans each tree in the growing season. On the contrary, Robusta coffee trees are comparatively hardy that can be grown in lower elevations with a higher yield of coffee (Turcotte et al. 2014). Amongst these two varieties, Arabica’s yield the better quality of beans with almost 70% of the harvest. In contrast to this Robusta tree account to almost 30% of the beans in the world production.

After arriving from the area of French Guiana during the early 18^th century, coffee beans were fast distributed in Brazil. From the current scenario, it has been seen that Brazil is accountable for almost one-third of extraction among all the coffee manufacturing in the world. Many in this context believed that Brazil's production of coffee is more emphasised towards quality as well as a variety (Bennett 2017). However, Brazil is one of the highest volume producers of coffee. In this context, the devastating 1975 specifically was the benefit for the other coffee growing companies. On the contrary, the 1994 touches of frost increased the price of coffee in the world (Ibanez and Blackman 2015).

Columbia is the only American country that consists of both Atlantic and Pacific ports provides with an inviable obligation to shipping. However, the coffees are favourable in this region due to the commodity’s economic importance. Columbia, coffee beans are usually grown in moist, temperate hills of the Andes (Raynolds et al. 2014). These coffees are usually cultivated in the area where there is high altitude and moist climate makes it favourable for coffee growth.

Coffees extracted in Central America and Mexico region are usually are mild and fragrant in form with the presence of subtle complicacies. However, these coffee beans are moderately acidic in nature and have medium features. The majority of the coffee extracted in this region is wet operated. These coffees are approachable and popular coffees that often have intense flavour (Wilson and Wilson 2014). They can be typically easily drunk, where the average number of consumers could appreciate.

The coffees of South America are usually fragmented down into a piece that overwhelmingly tempts the countries. Brazil and Columbia in this region together make up almost 43% of the total coffee market. In this context, Brazil had almost 34.5% of coffee production and Columbia has about 9.4% and Vietnam that mostly produces Robusta, at a percentage of 12.1% (Longoni and Luzzini 2016).

Brazil

These two countries have the entirely different type of coffee profiles. The Columbian coffee is more common in Central America than Brazil. This type of coffee is usually wet processes and approachable in nature. However, Columbia has been handicapped by its trade policies (Nguyen et al. 2015). Despite this, they managed to produce the effective quality of coffee from their private organisation and factories.

Coffee production from east Africa is usually characterised by winey and fruity acidity with the medium formation of features and fragrance of floral aroma. In this type of coffee mots of the quality coffee comes from the area are naturally wet processes. On the contrary, the coffee from Yemen are naturally processed and are quite delicious dry and fruity with sweet features (Bargawi and Newman 2017).

There is a huge amount of coffee that comes from East Africa and regions if Yemen. These coffees are produced organically by default since the farmers of these regions cannot afford expensive chemicals and cannot use them for traditional practices of growing (Tucker 2017).

The coffee beans from the Malay Archipelago are often seen to have high complicacy with several strong earthy notes. The majority of this type of coffee is wet processes and pulped naturally most of the time these coffee are cultivated in small backyard batches (De Janvry 2015). However, the process if drying of this type of coffee is complex due to the wet and humid climates. Similar, to the African region, there are tons of coffee that are produced in this region that can be considered organic but not certifies,

There are some origins that are needed to be encountered for coffee production:

India is not exceptionally well known for coffee production. However, the country has reasonably fair production that makes it the sixth largest manufacturer of coffee in the world with almost 4% of the entire coffee market (Chkanikova and Lehner 2015). However, coffee production in India is usually light in nature mixed with some Indian spice and chocolate with it.

These are the most notable and popular coffee types available from the Caribbean that is probably found in Jamaican Blue Mountain. However, various types of Coffee is also cultivated in other few countries of Caribbean and Puerto Rico areas (Kim et al. 2017). These types of coffees are usually wet processed, balanced and sweet in taste and features.

Hawaii country also manufactures a small amount of coffee. In this country, Kona is the most well-known commodity and the most expensive type of coffee that is found. This type of coffee is the easiest process of drinking coffee with subtle and fruity flavours in it. However, there are few other coffees cultivating regions on the other parts of Hawaii regions as well.

Columbia

The process of extraction and harvest coffee fruits for the consumers engage with a series of phases. Therefore, greater control of each step is necessary for this process of enhancing the ability to produce a better quality of the coffee. After cultivating the coffee, the fruits of coffee are usually sent for undergoing a primary process of extraction to separate the coffee seeds. On the contrary, a secondary process like decaffeination and steam process are done before roasting the coffee (Gellert et al. 2017). Thereafter, the roasting of the coffee beans is ground and packed for processing towards the further process.

Increased number of scientists across various disciplines has approved the opinion that there is a consistent increase in the atmospheric emission of the greenhouse that is altering the climatic condition of the earth. In this context, IPPC that is worlds most recognised scientific organisation that evaluated climatic change, regions that the average increase of global temperature in the year 2081 in relations to 2017-18 will be 0.3 degrees to 4.8 degrees in the different region owing to increase in atmospheric pressures (Cole and Brown 2014). Apart from these, it has been found that coffee as a commodity is increasingly turning expensive due to economic fluctuations and political instability. It has been found that political instability in Egypt and Tunisia, along with climatic change over the world is pushing the prices high for coffee. Since the year 2016, the price of green coffee Arabica has increased by 80% (Andorfer and Liebe 2015). In this context, all the coffee brewing companies are extensively increasing the price of coffee out of utmost necessity.

In contrast to this, the positive impact of the high cost of coffee for the farmers is an offset process owing to low production in several regions. In most of the cases, it has been found that higher margins of coffee productions do not abolish poverty of farmers. For instance, in Ecuador, the region has high microclimates that are favourable for coffee and has the capability to easily turn in to a top reaching producer (Vermeulen 2015). However, the problem is that the coffee industry has been progressing with a momentum of depression for years. The commodity has not managed to recover from the crisis of price that crippled within the sector before 10 years due to the fluctuating political instability.  

During that time, the cost of process fell down to a high level with $0.40 each pound and due to this the produces across the world abolished their company replaced it with more profitable commodity (Levy et al. 2016). In addition to this, the impact has been more due to the unpredictable climatic patterns that resulted in climatic change during the previous years. Owing to this, the level of production the major coffee producing regions including Ecuador continues to slow down by almost 50% from a high peak in the year 1980's.

Central America and Mexico

It has been that the humble coffee bean is the most essential and actively traded commodities across the world. In the 2015 poll report, it has been found that almost 64% of the Australians and Americans reported having been drinking at least a cup of coffee each day with a 2.7 on average (Jha et al. 2014). On the contrary, USA imports for nearly 2.8 million pound of green coffee each year and the Americans on the contrary consumers more than 9 pounds of coffee each day yearly.

The business of coffee extraction started during the period of the 1970's when the several Latin American coffee cultivators started converting their farms into a technician process of production. This incident took place in response to the disease outbreak in Brazil during the period of the early 70's when the dominant producers of coffee started for new healthier coffee varieties. Therefore, motivated by the domestic and national authorities along with the established of different agencies such as USAID, most of the cultivators started cutting down forests to build a  shelter under which coffee can be harvested with the plantation varietals especially brewed to grow under sunshine (Godar et al. 2016). These selected forms of coffee were termed to be healthier and increasingly resistant towards disease as well as pests. Moreover, these, varieties of coffee were less impacted by the application of chemicals.

During the end of the year 1990, the reduced shelter cultivation process accounted for almost 70% of Columbia's land resources that were devoted towards coffee production and 50% in Costa Rica region (Bacon et al. 2014). These technologies areas were five times more productive than the shelter system that came along with significance environmental outcome. In this context, of social change, it has been found that sheltered coffee farms have been proved to harbour highest level of biodiversity specifically for insects and migratory living beings amongst the entire agro ecosystem.

Moreover, a current study in this regards reported that taking from seed to drinking coffee, every cup of coffee uses almost 140 litres of water that takes into consideration the water that is used for irrigation, processing and shipping. The statistical figure for this type of coffee is comparatively higher for coffee grows in full sunshine than the ones that cultivated under shelter. Since these coffee types are grown within a more balanced ecosystem of the sheltered grove, technician forms of coffee needs increased levels of chemical pesticides to fight against pests. Moreover, since the technician form of plants manufactures more coffee they do not get the advantage of using recycles plant materials. As a result of which farmers are required to apply more fertilizer for making up the loss of the nutrients caused each year.

South America

At the core of the business technical forms of coffee, production applied to the industrial culture of an agricultural model for increasing coffee production. In this context, in several ways, this method has formed an exploitative connection in between coffee consumers in the international North and coffee manufacturers in the international southern region. However, environmental economists and sociologists have established the concept of ecologically unequal return that holds the fact that established countries will be responsible for externalising a significant part of their ecological footprint than the developing regions.

To be specific it can be said that industrialised countries are increasingly moving towards the impact of consumption. In this context, large statistical studies have ensured that amongst the lower and lower middle income countries’, the regions with a higher rate of trade export had reduced local resource that other aspects. It has been found that northern importers and southern export manufacturers became more unequal during the year 2000 from the year 1975 (Chkanikova and Lehner 2015). In this regards, over one third of the countries were found to be almost major coffee export producers including the giant’s producers such as Columbia and Brazil, along with other major producers such as Costa Rica, Kenya, Vietnam and Mexico that received potential percentage of GDP through coffee export revenue shares (Avelino et al. 2015).

On the contrary, another current study found that fair trade policies offer increased economic stability for the agricultural farmers by offering them the base price for selling coffee and motivating them to implement more sustainable forms of farming activities. In this asper, a current movement, on direct trade has reported that buyers have been sending representatives directly to the coffee company to witness their practices for developing long-term trading acquaintances.

Conclusion

Therefore, it is evident from the above study that the changes in the social and political environment of coffee extraction are that more enhanced form of sustainable change is needed to come from international agreements along with local economic and political improvement in producing coffee. Since the origination of coffee, there has been a high change within the trading process that has created a direction towards the social-ecological exploitation of the coffee industry.

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