How coffee is grown

The coffee tree belongs to the Rubiaceae family of evergreen plants. In total, there are 73 varieties of this plant on the planet. They range in size from dwarf shrubs to 10-meter- tall giants. For convenient harvesting, plantations mostly use shrubs between 1 and 1.5 m in height. The plants yield red cranberry-sized berries containing the coffee beans inside them.

Coffee is a perennial plant able to deliver a good amount of beans for 20 to 30 years. After that, their yielding capacity decreases greatly but the trees may grow well until they are 200 years old. The time between planting the tree and large-scale harvesting depends on the climatic zone but usually it is 4-5 years for Arabica, and 2-3 years for Robusta. A single coffee tree can give from 0.5 to 3 kg of beans every year. The trees can pollinate each other as well, but bees make this process more effective as it can even double the yield. Yielding capacity also increases if there are other flowering plants at the plantation.

Nowadays, coffee is grown in more than 65 countries of the world. All plantations are located in the tropical belt of the planet. Brazil is considered the largest coffee exporter, accounting for one third of the global coffee production. It’s interesting that the first coffee seedlings were smuggled to Brazil from Paris. The top three coffee producers also include Columbia with about 15% of all coffee output, and Vietnam, found to be the largest supplier of Robusta coffee.