The popularity of coffee cultivation as a cash crop is still increasing, and training of the coffee growers remains of great importance to ensure a good yield for these farmers once the newly planted coffee trees start bearing fruit. Arabica coffee trees root deep, and a straight well-developed tap root is of great importance to ensure good nutritional uptake. One of the most common malformations in nursery plants are twisted taproots. These seedlings should be discarded as the resulting trees will not only be poor yielders, but also have a shortened lifespan. During our field visits we often come upon trees with twisted or bent taproots. They may be good for an attempt of an artistic picture, but the only option for the farmer in such a case is to replace these trees.
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After an unusually long and very dry season, it's now the rains that aren't planning to leave any time soon. As a result many roads are not in the best condition, like the one we took last week on our way to Jinggu. We left Simao at 11 am and arrived at our destination at 11 pm. Total distance covered: about 150 km. After having done a number of visits in Jinggu, we continued to Zhenyuan. Our first contacts in that region date back about two years ago when we gave a training on coffee cultivation. The local farmers gain their income mainly from growing corn, tobacco and rearing pigs. Some village communities and local farmers have taken up coffee cultivation as a main cash crop. The first harvest from these villages are expected next year. And where we started with muddy roads, the last field visit of this trip led us to this river, only to be crossed by a bridge, just wide enough to let one car pass at a time. Last week I visited a supplier whose first contacts with NAS date back from the early days we started working here. He started growing coffee in 1992 and during the years has expanded his plantation from 0.7 to 4.5 ha. In July he and his wife visited the Expo in Shanghai. One of the pavilions he didn't want to miss during this visit was the Belgian one since this is the country my father and me come from. Now we can only hope he won't turn from cultivating coffee to cacao having seen one of the things Belgium is famous for.
It is said that the first coffee houses were located in Mecca. The Kaveh Kanes, originally religious meeting houses, soon turned into social meeting places where news and gossip were exchanged, and clients were entertained by singing and traditional story-telling. But it didn't take long before controversy started between those in favour of the drink and those against. This however didn't stop coffee from gaining popularity all over the world and one after the other coffee house opened its doors. The controversy followed in its footsteps. At one time some clerics in Italy even suggested it was the Devil's work in an attempt to get the beverage forbidden. Their plan however fell through as Pope Clement VIII liked it so much he strived for the complete opposite: having it baptised so it would truly be Christian drink! While the popularity of coffee increased rapidly, its cultivation remained in the hands of the Arabs for a long time. In an attempt to maintain total control, they even imposed a ban on the export of fertile coffee beans. This monopoly came to an end when the Dutch managed to circumvent this restriction in 1616 by getting a coffee plant to the Netherlands. The Dutch were also responsible for introducing coffee in Sri Lanka, Java and Surinam, soon after which it became widely established in South America. The British closed the circle in 1878 when they laid the foundations of the coffee industry in Kenya, right next to the country where it all started centuries before.
The abundance of the legends I posted before might have already suggested it: the true origins of coffee are well hidden in the mists of the past. There is botanical evidence that suggests that coffee originated on the plateaus of central Ethiopia. And that's about it. Nobody knows exactly when or how its stimulant effect was discovered, nor where and when its cultivation started. Some sources date these discoveries back to the sixth century, whereas others claim there are no records until the ninth, thirteenth or even seventeenth century. The truth probably lies in between as the earliest credible evidence appears in the middle of the fifteenth century, in the Sufi monasteries of Yemen. It's also pretty clear that it was in Arabia that coffee beans were first roasted and brewed in a similar way as to how it is done today. The only thing in coffee's history that seems certain is that the plant originated in Ethiopia, somehow ended up in Yemen and began its journey around the world from Arabia. Hence it might be that there is some truth in the story that coffee arrived in Arabia by slaves taken from present day Sudan. These slaves arrived in Yemen and Arabia through the port of Mocha, and chewed coffee berries to help them survive the journey. To substantiate this story, there is proof that coffee was ground and mixed with butter by the Galla tribe of Ethiopia in order to consume it like chocolate, a practice that exists to date in some parts of Kaffa and Sidamo.
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AuthorI wouldn't be surprised to find out I was born with a passion for coffee. For the life of me, I can't remember not loving coffee. And by that, I don't just mean drinking it, but everything involved from its cultivation over the processing to the final product that is my loyal companion throughout the day. Archives
February 2014
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