Coffee production in Jamaica began after 1728, when governor Sir Nicholas Lawes introduced the crop near Castleton, north of Kingston. [1] Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee is the special variety of coffee that is grown in the Blue Mountains region, which has the most conducive climate and topographical features; this variety is known for its scent and sweet taste. [2] Most of Jamaica's coffee production is grown for export.
Most of the coffee grown on the island is a derivative of the Brazilian variety known as Coffea arabica Typica, constituting 70% of the yield, while other varieties grown are hybrid varieties of caturra, geisha, etc. [3] The coffee that is grown in the Blue Mountains region, known as the Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee, is said to be of very high quality and is mostly exported. [3] Coffee is grown at an elevation of 15–1,603 metres (49–5,259 ft), with a rainfall incidence varying from 125 centimetres (49 in) to more than 700 centimetres (280 in). [3] Farming methods are specifically oriented towards a high rate of production with optimum acidity. [2]
The Ministry of Agriculture and its subordinate office, the Jamaica Agricultural Commodities Authority [4] (previously the Coffee Industry Board), are responsible for all activities of the coffee sector. The Coffee Industry Development Company (CIDCO) (was set up by what was then the Coffee Industry Board) assumes direct responsibility for coffee production and also to render assistance to farmers owning 1 hectare (2.5 acres) or more of land dedicated to this crop. [5]
The Coffee Industry Regulation Act specifies what coffee may use the Blue Mountain label, and also restricts the use of the Blue Mountain trademark to production authorised by the Jamaica Agricultural Commodities Authority [6] broadly speaking, coffee harvested from the parishes of Saint Andrew, Saint Thomas, Portland, and Saint Mary may be considered Blue Mountain coffee. [6]
According to FAO statistics for 2013, Jamaican coffee production was 6,984 tons, representing about 0.1% of world production. [7] The coffee was grown in an area of 8,000 hectares (20,000 acres) with a yield rate of 8,730 hectogram per ha. For the period from 1981 to 2013, the lowest production was 958 tons in 1979 and the highest was 15,117 tons in 2007. [7]
Coffee is an export commodity. As it is labour-intensive, it provides employment to a large extent to the rural and urban people of the country right through the stages of production, processing, and sale. Requirement for export has exceeded production. [3] More than 80 per cent of the production of Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee is exported to Japan. [2] In 2005, there was a shortfall in this export on account of destruction to the crop resulting from the Hurricane Ivan in the later part of 2004. [2]
The economy of the Dominican Republic is the eighth largest in Latin America, and is the largest in the Caribbean and Central American region. The Dominican Republic is an upper-middle income developing country primarily dependent on mining, agriculture, trade, and services. The Dominican Republic is on track to achieve its goal of becoming a high-income country by 2030, and is expected to grow 79% in this decade. The country is the site of the single largest gold mine in Latin America, the Pueblo Viejo mine. Although the service sector has recently overtaken agriculture as the leading employer of Dominicans, agriculture remains the most important sector in terms of domestic consumption and is in second place in terms of export earnings. Tourism accounts for more than $7.4 billion in annual earnings in 2019. Free-trade zone earnings and tourism are the fastest-growing export sectors. Remittances are an important sector of the economy contributing $8.2 billion in 2020. Most of these funds are used to cover household expenses such as housing, food, clothing, health care and education. Secondarily, remittances have financed businesses and productive activities. Thirdly, this combined effect has induced investment by the private sector and helps fund the public sector through its value-added tax. The combined import market including the free-trade-zones amounts to a market of $20 billion a year in 2019. The combined export sector had revenues totaling $11 billion in 2019. The consumer market is equivalent to $61 billion in 2019.
The economy of Jamaica is heavily reliant on services, accounting for 70% of the country's GDP. Jamaica has natural resources, primarily bauxite, and an ideal climate conducive to agriculture and also tourism. The discovery of bauxite in the 1940s and the subsequent establishment of the bauxite-alumina industry shifted Jamaica's economy from sugar and bananas. By the 1970s, Jamaica had emerged as a world leader in export of these minerals as foreign investment increased.
The economy of Dominica is reliant upon agriculture, particularly bananas, with the financial services industry becoming increasingly the island's largest source of income. Banana production employs, directly or indirectly, upwards of one-third of the work force. This sector is highly vulnerable to weather conditions and to external events affecting commodity prices. The value of banana exports fell to less than 25% of merchandise trade earnings in 1998 compared to about 44% in 1994.
Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee or Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee is a classification of coffee grown in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. The coffee was introduced to Jamaica in 1728.
Agriculture in the Philippines employs 27.7% of the Filipino workforce as of 2017, according to the World Bank Agriculture is an important part of the economy of the Philippines with crops like rice, coconut and sugar dominating the production of crops and exports.
Agriculture continued to be the mainstay of the economy of Haiti in the late 1980s; it employed approximately 66 percent of the labor force and accounted for about 35 percent of GDP and for 24 percent of exports in 1987. The role of agriculture in the economy has declined severely since the 1950s, when the sector employed 80 percent of the labor force, represented 50 percent of GDP, and contributed 90 percent of exports. Many factors have contributed to this decline. Some of the major ones included the continuing fragmentation of landholdings, low levels of agricultural technology, migration out of rural areas, insecure land tenure, a lack of capital investment, high commodity taxes, the low productivity of undernourished animals, plant diseases, and inadequate infrastructure. Neither the government nor the private sector invested much in rural ventures; in FY 1989 only 5 percent of the national budget went to the Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Rural Development. As Haiti entered the 1990s, however, the main challenge to agriculture was not economic, but ecological. Extreme deforestation, soil erosion, droughts, flooding, and the ravages of other natural disasters had all led to a critical environmental situation.
Agriculture employs the majority of Madagascar's population. Mainly involving smallholders, agriculture has seen different levels of state organisation, shifting from state control to a liberalized sector.
Uganda's favorable soil conditions and climate have contributed to the country's agricultural success. Most areas of Uganda have usually received plenty of rain. In some years, small areas of the southeast and southwest have averaged more than 150 millimeters per month. In the north, there is often a short dry season in December and January. Temperatures vary only a few degrees above or below 20 °C but are moderated by differences in altitude.
About 90 percent of the population (Burundi) depends on agriculture for a living. Most agriculture consists of subsistence farming, with only about 15% of the total production marketed. An estimated 1,351,000 hectares (3,338,000 acres), or about 52.6% of the total land area, is arable or under permanent crops; about 5.5% of cropland is irrigated. The average farm family plot is 0.8 hectares. Agriculture accounted for 51% of the GDP in 2004. Coffee and tea exports comprise the majority of foreign earnings; coffee alone accounted for 39% of exports of goods in 2004. Agricultural exports accounted for 48 percent of exports in 2004. Principal crops for local consumption are manioc, beans, bananas, sweet potatoes, corn, and sorghum. Production in 2004 included bananas, 1,600,000 tons, mostly for wine; manioc, 710,000 tons; sweet potatoes, 834,000 tons; beans, 220,000 tons; sorghum, 74,000 tons; corn, 123,000 tons; peanuts, 8,800 tons; and yams, 9,900 tons.
Agriculture in Cameroon is an industry that has plenty of potential.
The role of agriculture in the Bolivian economy in the late 1980s expanded as the collapse of the tin industry forced the country to diversify its productive and export base. Agricultural production as a share of GDP was approximately 23 percent in 1987, compared with 30 percent in 1960 and a low of just under 17 percent in 1979. The recession of the 1980s, along with unfavorable weather conditions, particularly droughts and floods, hampered output. Agriculture employed about 46 percent of the country's labor force in 1987. Most production, with the exception of coca, focused on the domestic market and self-sufficiency in food. Agricultural exports accounted for only about 15 percent of total exports in the late 1980s, depending on weather conditions and commodity prices for agricultural goods, hydrocarbons, and minerals.
Throughout its history, agriculture in Paraguay has been the mainstay of the economy. This trend has continued today and in the late 1980s the agricultural sector generally accounted for 48 percent of the nation's employment, 23 percent of GDP, and 98 percent of export earnings. The sector comprised a strong food and cash crop base, a large livestock subsector including cattle ranching and beef production, and a vibrant timber industry.
The Guadeloupe Bonifieur is a variety of coffee grown in Guadeloupe. Guadeloupe Bonifieur is the ancestor of Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee and is very rare. The fresh air, high altitude, and abundance of rain create ideal conditions for growing this Arabica variety. The variety is called Guadeloupe Bonifieur because of its high quality and great taste, and because, in the past, it was used to enhance lower quality blends. Connoisseurs consider it one of the best coffees in the world, even though it is only available from a few distributors.
Coffee is Uganda's top-earning export crop. In 1989 Uganda's coffee production capacity exceeded its quota of 2.3 million bags, but export volumes were still diminished by economic and security problems, and large amounts of coffee beans were still being smuggled out of Uganda for sale in neighbouring countries.
Coffee has been grown in Cuba since the mid-18th century. Boosted by French farmers fleeing the revolution in Haiti, coffee farms expanded from the western plains to the nearby mountain ranges. Coffee production in eastern Cuba significantly increased during the 19th and early 20th centuries. At its peak production, Cuba exported more than 20,000 metric tons of coffee beans per year in the mid 1950s. After the Cuban Revolution and the nationalization of the coffee industry, coffee production slowly began to decline until it reached all time lows during the Great Recession. Once a major Cuban export, it now makes up an insignificant portion of Cuban trade. By the 21st century, 92 percent of the country's coffee was grown in area of the Sierra Maestra mountains. All Cuban coffee is exported by Cubaexport, which pays regulated prices to coffee growers and processors.
Coffee production in Venezuela began in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the Premontane shankarof the Andes mountains. José Gumilla, a Jesuit priest, is credited with introducing coffee into Venezuela, in 1732. Its production is attributed to the large demand for the product, coupled with cheap labour and low land costs. It was first exported to Brazil. Coffee production in Venezuela led to the "complex migration" of people to this region in the late nineteenth century. Though Venezuela was ranked close to Colombia at one time in coffee production, by 2001, it produced less than one percent of the world's coffee.
Coffee production in Panama was occurring in the Boquete Valley by the early 20th century, although coffee was growing wild all over the Pacific coast region of Panama by this time, when production did not match domestic consumption. The International Coffee Organization (ICO) has grouped mild arabica as the variety of coffee that is grown in Panama. The best quality of coffee in Panama is grown in Boquete. In the Coffee Review of 2008, two Panamanian coffees have received higher rating and fetched record prices than the coffee from Costa Rica. This is mainly due to the unprecedented success of the Geisha varietal. This varietal originated from Ethiopia and arrived via Tanzania and Costa Rica in the 1960s in Panama. But only in 2004, its outstanding taste profile was recognized. In 2019 one pound of Panama Geisha beans fetched $1029 in an auction.
Coffee production in the Dominican Republic is based mainly in the mountain regions of the country, in the highlands which form at least one-half of the area of Hispaniola. Introduced to the country in 1715, the Dominican Republic bean is larger and thicker than Martinique's. The major coffee variety grown in the country is Arabica. Robusta is also grown but only in about 1.3% of the land area; it is consumed locally.
Agriculture is the main part of Tanzania's economy. As of 2016, Tanzania had over 44 million hectares of arable land with only 33 percent of this amount in cultivation. Almost 70 percent of the poor population live in rural areas, and almost all of them are involved in the farming sector. Land is a vital asset in ensuring food security, and among the nine main food crops in Tanzania are maize, sorghum, millet, rice, wheat, beans, cassava, potatoes, and bananas. The agricultural industry makes a large contribution to the country's foreign exchange earnings, with more than US$1 billion in earnings from cash crop exports.
Benguet coffee, also known as Benguet arabica, is a single-origin coffee varietal grown in the Cordillera highlands of the northern Philippines since the 19th century. It belongs to the species Coffea arabica, of the Typica variety. It is one of the main crops of farmers in the province of Benguet, which has a climate highly suitable for arabica cultivation. Benguet coffee is listed in the Ark of Taste international catalogue of endangered heritage foods by the Slow Food movement.
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