General Discussion

Coffee is a beverage, served hot or with ice, prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant. These seeds are almost always called coffee beans. Coffee is the second most commonly traded commodity in the world, trailing only petroleum, and the most consumed beverage. A total of 6.7 million tonnes of coffee were produced annually in 1998-2000, forecast to rise to 7 million tonnes annually by 2010. [1] Coffee is one of humanity's chief sources of caffeine, a stimulant. Its potential benefits and hazards have been, and continue to be, widely studied and discussed.

Etymology and history

The word entered English in 1598 via Italian caffè, via Turkish kahve, from Arabic qahwa, meaning "to have no appetite," as in to have no appetite for sleep. Its ultimate origin is uncertain, there being several legendary accounts of the origin of the drink. One possible origin is the Kaffa region in Ethiopia, where the plant originated (its native name there being bunna). Coffee beans were first exported from Ethiopia to Yemen. One legendary account is that of the Yemenite Sufi mystic named Shaikh ash-Shadhili. When traveling in Ethiopia he observed goats of unusual vitality and, upon trying the berries that the goats had been eating, experienced the same effect. A similar myth ascribes the discovery to an Ethiopian goatherd named Kaldi. Qahwa originally referred to a type of wine, and need not be the name of the Kaffa region.

Consumption of coffee was outlawed in Mecca in 1511, and in Cairo in 1532, but in the face of the drink's immense popularity, the decree was later rescinded. In 1554, the first coffeehouse in Istanbul opened.

Largely through the efforts of the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, coffee became available in Europe no later than the 16th century, according to Leonhard Rauwolf's 1583 account. The first coffeehouse in England was set up in Oxford by one Jacob or Jacobs, a Turkish Jew, in 1650. The first coffeehouse in London was opened two years later in St. Michael's Alley in Cornhill. The proprietor was Pasqua Rosée, the Ragusan servant of a trader in Turkish goods named Daniel Edwards, who imported the coffee and assisted Rosée in setting up the establishment. The coffeehouse spread rapidly in Europe and America after that, with first coffeehouses opening in Boston in 1670, and in Paris in 1671. By 1675, there were more than 3,000 coffeehouses in England.

Women were not allowed in coffeehouses, and in London, the anonymous 1674 "Women's Petition Against Coffee" complained:

"…the Excessive Use of that Newfangled, Abominable, Heathenish Liquor called COFFEE […] has […] Eunucht our Husbands, and Crippled our more kind Gallants, that they are become as Impotent, as Age. "[2]

Legend has it that the first coffeehouse opened in Vienna in 1683 after the Battle of Vienna, taking its supplies from the spoils left behind by the defeated Turks. The officer who received the coffee beans, Polish military officer Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki, opened the first coffee house in Vienna and helped popularize the custom of adding sugar and milk to the coffee (until recently, this was celebrated in Viennese coffeehouses by hanging of picture of Kulczycki in the window). Additionally, another credible story is that the first coffeehouses were opened in Krakow in the 16th or 17th century because of closer trade ties with the East, most notably the Turks. The first coffee plantation in the New World was established in Brazil in 1727 when Lt. Col. Francisco de Melo Palheta smuggled seeds from the French Guiana in a bouquet spiked with seedlings that was to sprout a coffee empire. By the 1800 Brazil’s harvests would turn coffee from an elite indulgence to an everyday elixir, a drink for the people. Brazil, like most other countries cultivates coffee as a commercial commodity, relied heavily on slave labor from Africa for its viability until abolition in 1888. The success of coffee in 17th-century Europe was paralleled with the spread of the habit of tobacco smoking all over the continent during the course of the Thirty Years' War (1618–48).

For many decades in the 19th and early 20th centuries Brazil was the biggest producer and virtual monopolist in the trade, until a policy of maintaining high prices opened opportunities to other growers, like Colombia, Guatemala and Indonesia.

Coffee bean types

For a discussion about different varieties of coffee beans, see also: Coffee varietals

Coffea arabica—Brazil

There are two main species of the coffee plant. Coffea arabica is the older of them. Thought to be indigenous to Ethiopia, it was first cultivated on the Arabian Peninsula. While more susceptible to disease, it is considered by most to taste better than Coffea canephora (robusta). Robusta, which contains about twice as much caffeine, can be cultivated in environments where arabica will not thrive. This has led to its use as an inexpensive substitute for arabica in many commercial coffee blends. Compared to arabica, robusta tends to be bitter and has little flavor, with a telltale "burnt rubber" or "wet cardboard" aroma and flavor. Good quality robustas are used as ingredients in some espresso blends to provide a better "crema" (foamy head), and to lower the ingredient cost. In Italy many espresso blends are based on dark-roasted robusta.

Arabica coffees were traditionally named by the port they were exported from, the two oldest being Mocha, from Yemen, and Java, from Indonesia. The modern coffee trade is much more specific about origin, labeling coffees by country, region, and sometimes even the producing estate. Coffee aficionados may even distinguish auctioned coffees by lot number.

The largest coffee exporting nation remains Brazil, but in recent years the green coffee market has been flooded by large quantities of robusta beans from Vietnam ^[3]. Many experts believe this giant influx of cheap green coffee after the collapse of the International Coffee Agreement of 1975-1989 with Cold War pressures led to the prolonged pricing crisis from 2001 to 2004. ^{[citation needed]} In 1997 the "c" price of coffee in New York broke US$3.00/lb, but by late 2001 it had fallen to US$0.43/lb. Robusta coffees (traded in London at much lower prices than New York's Arabica) are preferred by large industrial clients (multinational roasters, instant coffee producers, etc.) because of their lower cost.

Coffee beans from two different places, or coffee varietals, usually have distinctive characteristics such as flavor (flavor criteria includes terms such as "citrus-like" or "earthy"), caffeine content, body or mouthfeel, and acidity (black coffee has a pH of around 5) [4]. These are dependent on the local environment where the coffee plants are grown, their method of process, and the genetic subspecies or varietal.

Economics of coffee

Top Ten Green Coffee Producers - 2005 (million metric ton)
Brazil	2.18
Vietnam	0.99
Indonesia	0.76
Colombia	0.68
Mexico	0.31
India	0.28
Ethiopia	0.26
Guatemala	0.22
Honduras	0.19
Uganda	0.19
World Total	7.72
Source: UN Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO)[5]

Coffee is one of the world's most important primary commodities; it ranks second only to petroleum in terms of dollars traded worldwide, ($70 billion pa). With over 400 billion cups consumed every year, coffee is the world's most popular beverage. Worldwide, 25 million small producers rely on coffee for a living. For instance, in Brazil alone, where almost a third of all the world's coffee is produced, over 5 million people are employed in the cultivation and harvesting of over 3 billion coffee plants; it is a much more labour-intensive culture than alternative cultures of the same regions as soy, sugar cane, wheat or cattle, as it is not subject to automation and requires constant attention.

Coffee is also bought and sold as a commodity on the New York Coffee, Sugar, and Cocoa Exchange. This is where coffee futures contracts are traded, which are a financial asset involving a standardized contract for the future sale or purchase of a unit of coffee at an agreed price. The world's largest transfer point for coffee is the port of Hamburg, Germany.^{[citation needed]}

According to the Composite Index of the London-based coffee export country group International Coffee Organization the monthly coffee price averages in international trade had been well above 100 US cent/lb during in the 70s/80s, but then declined during the late 90s reaching a minimum in September 2001 of just 41.17 US cent per lb and stayed low until 2004. The reasons for this decline included a collapse of the International Coffee Agreement of 1975-1989 with Cold War pressures, which had held the minimum coffee price at USD$1.20 per pound. Moreover, the expansion of Brazilian coffee plantations and Vietnam's entry into the market in 1994 when the United States trade embargo against it was lifted added supply pressures. The market awarded the more efficient Vietnamese coffee suppliers with trade and caused less efficient coffee bean farmers in many countries such as Brazil, Nicaragua, and Ethiopia not to be able to live off of their products, which at many times were priced below the cost of production, forcing many to quit the coffee bean production and move into slums in the cities. (Mai, 2006).

Ironically, the decline in the ingredient cost of green coffee, while not the only cost component of the final cup being served, was paralleled by the rise in popularity of Starbucks and thousands of other specialty cafés, which sold their beverages at unprecedented high prices. According to the Specialty Coffee Association of America, in 2004 16% of adults in the United States drank specialty coffee daily; the number of retail specialty coffee locations, including cafés, kiosks, coffee carts and retail roasters, amounted to 17,400 and total sales were $8.96 billion in 2003. It is important to note that the coffee sold at retail is a different economic product than wholesale coffee traded as a commodity, which becomes an input to the various ultimate end products so that its market is ultimately effected by changes in the ultimate consumption patterns and prices. The market for soft drinks has been steadily climbing, passing the consumption of coffee in terms of mass of product consumed in the early 2000s.

In 2005, however, the coffee prices rose (with the above-mentioned ICO Composite Index monthly averages between 78.79 (September) and 101.44 (March) US Cent per lb). This rise was likely caused by an increase in consumption in Russia and China as well as a harvest which was about 10% to 20% lower than that in the record years before. Many coffee bean farmers can now live off their products, but not all of the extra-surplus trickles down to them, because rising petroleum prices make the transportation, roasting and packaging of the coffee beans more expensive. Prices are expected to either remain constant or rise in 2006. (Mai, 2006)

Coffee is often mentioned along with other primarily agricultural goods and production of primary inputs (like raw minerals) as one of the main government-controlled economic goods under historical regimes of imperialism, mercantilism, and protectionism, (along with attempts at supporting free trade pricing using a country's core government-estimated comparative advantage), within an overall economic pattern in which some developing countries have had a very large investment in one product made primarily for export, and thus become somewhat dependent upon the demand and world market price for coffee. For example, Brasil's government tried at many times to stabilize the national income from coffee production through methods such as regulating new plantations, production levels, imposing tariffs and subsidies, keeping its own stocks, paying a fixed price to farmers, controlling export prices and by controlling currency exchange rates with a long series of complex controls in which the rates were determined with combinations of the free trade rate and statutory rates in tiers depending upon the type of product being sold (for example, to try to favor coffee over sugar or cotton cloth production or vice versa depending upon the current goals of the government). There is much controversy around the idea that these countries are unstable and subservient because of their large dependence on the free trade price of products like coffeee. Much has been done in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries to diversify production in countries like Brasil, and many countries today are much closer to being fully free-trade regimes with coffee and other products.

Shade trees in Orosí in Costa Rica. In the background (red) shade trees and in the foreground pruned trees for different periods in the growth cycle.

A number of classifications are used to label coffee produced under certain environmental or labor standards. For instance, bird-friendly or shade-grown coffee is produced in regions where natural shade (canopy trees) is used to shelter coffee plants during parts of the growing season. Organic coffee is produced under strict certification guidelines, and is grown without the use of potentially harmful artificial pesticides or fertilizers; conventional coffee is grown with more pesticides than any other agricultural crop—cotton comes second. The ironically named Fair trade Coffee is produced by small coffee producers; guaranteeing for these producers a minimum price, though with historically low prices, current fair-trade minimums are lower than the market price of only a few years ago. TransFair USA is the primary organization currently overseeing Fair Trade coffee practices in the United States, while the Fairtrade Foundation does so in the United Kingdom.

Health and pharmacology of coffee

Coffee is consumed in large part not simply because of taste, but because of the effect it has on those who drink it. The coffee bean itself contains chemicals which are mind-altering (in a way some find pleasing) for humans as a by-product of their defense mechanism. These chemicals are toxic in large doses, or even in their normal amount when consumed by many creatures which may otherwise have threatened the beans in the wild.

Coffee as a stimulant

Coffee contains caffeine, which acts as a stimulant. For this reason, it is often drunk in the morning and during working hours. Students preparing for examinations with late-night "cram sessions" use coffee to maintain their concentration. Many office workers take a "coffee break" when their energy is diminished.

Recent research has uncovered additional stimulating effects of coffee which are not related to its caffeine content. Coffee contains an as yet unknown chemical agent which stimulates the production of cortisone and adrenaline, two stimulating hormones ^{[citations needed]}.

For occasions when one wants to enjoy the flavor of coffee with almost no stimulation, decaffeinated coffee (also called decaf) is available. This is coffee from which most of the caffeine has been removed, by the Swiss water process (which involves the soaking of raw beans to absorb the caffeine) or the use of a chemical solvent such as trichloroethylene ("tri"), or the more popular methylene chloride, in a similar process. Another solvent used is ethyl acetate; the resultant decaffeinated coffee is marketed as "natural decaf" due to ethyl acetate being naturally present in fruit. Extraction with supercritical carbon dioxide has also been employed.

Decaffeinated coffee usually loses some flavor over normal coffees and tends to be more bitter. There are also coffee alternatives that resemble coffee in taste but contain no caffeine (see below). These are available both in ground form for brewing and in instant form.

Caffeine dependency and withdrawal symptoms are well-documented; see Caffeine for more on the pharmacological effects of caffeine.

There have been cases all over the world of people who drink/take too much of the actual coffee bean material (anywhere between 10-50 tablespoon's worth) and have experienced side effects similar to that of the illegal drug cocaine.

Benefits

Coffee increases the effectiveness of pain killers—especially migraine medications—and can rid some people of asthma. For this reason some aspirin producers also include a small dose of caffeine in the pill. Some of the beneficial effects may be restricted to one sex, for instance it has been shown to reduce the occurrence of gallstones and gallbladder disease in men. Coffee intake may reduce one's risk of diabetes mellitus type 2 by up to half. While this was originally noticed in patients who consumed high amounts (7 cups a day), the relationship was later shown to be linear (Salazar-Martinez 2004).

Coffee can also reduce the incidence of cirrhosis of the liver and prevent colon and bladder cancers. Coffee can reduce the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma, a variety of liver cancer (Inoue, 2005). Also, coffee reduces the incidence of heart disease, though whether this is simply because it rids the blood of excess fat or because of its stimulant effect is unknown. At the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 2005, chemist Joe Vinson of the University of Scranton presented his analysis showing that for Americans, who as a whole do not consume large quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables, coffee represents by far the largest source of valuable antioxidants in the diet.[6]

Coffee contains the anticancer compound methylpyridinium. This compound is not present in significant amounts in other food materials. Methylpyridinium is not present in raw coffee beans but is formed during the roasting process from trigonellin, which is common in raw coffee beans. It is present in both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee, and even in instant coffee. 6

Coffee is also a powerful stimulant for peristalsis and is sometimes considered to prevent constipation; it is also a diuretic