A cup of coffee, like any other experience, can be enriched by selection and consciousness. Choosing coffee beans can also be a perplexing experience, because there is a huge range of coffee types and bean blends from all around the word. The final flavor and quality involves many complex factors, beginning with coffee seed, the beans’ botanics, a wide variety of soil and climate conditions, cultivation altitudes, and the care taken in harvesting the beans. Raw green coffee beans are then subjected to many influences factors, including various processing, production, roasting, blending, and brewing methods. On a global note, the many species and varieties coffee trees from different areas of the world also offer their own distinctive flavors.
There are more than forty-five coffee exporting countries – all of which use different classification systems – that supply the world with coffee beans, in sizes ranging over sixty known species of coffee plants.
Coffee is second only to oil in terms of dollars traded worldwide. The word’s green (unroasted) coffee trade is valued at $14 billion annually. Five geographic coffee growing regions – South America, Central America, Asia, Africa and the word’s few coffee producing islands (which include Hawaii and Jamaica) – situated between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, where the climate is hot and humid. Within these regions lie the coffee producing countries that supply the world annually with 91 million sacks, each weighing an average of 132 pounds.
Other facts:
- South and Central America produce 70 percent of the world’s coffee supply.
- Asia and Africa produce 20 percent of the world’ coffee supply.
- Coffee producing islands (including Hawaii and Jamaica) account for the remaining production.
- Of the worldwide coffee market, arabica beans account for 75 to 80 percent; robusta beans for the remaining 20 – 25 percent.
