Business & Personal Finance

No other beverage is worshipped quite like coffee. Wherever you go, whatever time of day, you will see hundreds of people carrying coffee cups and hanging on to them as if they were a lifeline. Many people need their morning cup of coffee before they can even utter a word.

So whom do we have to thank for this elixir? Coffee's birthplace is in Ethiopia but it is not known exactly when or by whom it was discovered.  It is likely that the leaves and berries of the plant were simply chewed.  At some point they were boiled with water to produce a beverage more similar to tea. And probably some time in the fifteenth century  someone roasted the beans, ground them and infused them in hot water to create the drink we are familiar with today.

Eventually coffee spread through trade with the Arabs and when the Ethiopians invaded and ruled Yemen in the sixth century they set up coffee plantations. By the end of the fifteenth century, Muslim pilgrims had introduced coffee throughout the Islamic world. Throughout the 1500s the drink gained popularity but was also banned from time to time due to its addictive nature and because coffeehouses allowed people to get together for conversations, entertainment and business and often became irreverent by insulting leaders, writing satiric poetry and engaging in improper behaviour. In fact, it is believed that the French Revolution  began in the coffeehouses of France. The Dutch supplied the European market with coffee grown in the Dutch East Indies. By the 1650s coffee was sold in Italy by street vendors, and Venice's first coffee house, called "caffe", was opened in 1683. In 1689, Francoise Procope, an Italian immigrant, opened his "Cafe de Procope" in Paris and soon French actors, authors, and others began meeting there for coffee and literary conversations.Coffee and coffeehouses continued to spread throughout Europe and with the increase in consumption came the spread of plantations from the Dutch East Indies to Central and South America.

Some fun facts about coffee:  we drink over 500 billion cups of coffee worldwide every year and the industry is worth over $100 billion worldwide ahead of commodities like natural gas, gold, brent oil, sugar and corn. Coffee exporting alone is a $20 billion dollar industry and is mostly consumed by industrialized nations.Coffee is grown in over 50 countries in Asia, Africa, South America, Central America and the Caribbean. The top three producers of coffee are Brazil, Vietnam and Colombia and 67% of the world's coffee is grown in the Americas alone. Coffee shops are popping up everywhere and have a 7% annual growth rate. Beans from different countries or regions can usually be distinguished by differences in flavor, aroma, body and acidity. "Fair trade" coffee was instituted to provide growers with better conditions and a higher cut of the profit. Under fair trade rules, the coffee importer has a direct relationship with the grower, and pays more to maintain that relationship. McDonald's and Starbucks carry free trade coffee.

To read more about the coffee industry and related topics, check out these books: