Coffee Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Coffee - Essay Example The finest coffee in the world that is grown in shade instead of sunlight is found in India. The number of coffee-growers in India is around 250,000, and 98 per cent of them grow it on a small scale. White flowers appear on the coffee plants and have an average life of three days before maturing into seeds. The duration between the fruit’s blooming and maturing stages varies from one region to another and from type to type. This duration for Arabica is around seven months whereas it is almost nine months for Robusta. The coffee plant needs around 90 per cent humidity and 70 degrees Fahrenheit of temperature to grow (Smestad, 2012). Coffee plants may catch fungus if not treated for it. There are two basic methods of processing coffee; the dry processing method and the wet processing method. In the former, coffee beans are dried in the sun whereas in the latter, they are fomented and washed. The power of coffee as a commodity is immense. â€Å"Coffee began as an export commodity in Yemen before 1500† (Topik and Samper, n.d., p. 6). Today, coffee is one of the most traded products around the world and is the largest food item imported by the US. The coffee commodity chain comprises producers, workers, exporting agencies, importing countries, roasters, and shops. This is how they reach the consumers. A lot of developing countries depend upon coffee as the prime export item. â€Å"Some 20 million families in 50 countries now work directly in the cultivation of coffee; an estimated 11 million hectares of the world’s farmland are dedicated to coffee cultivation† (Coffee News, 2008). Developing countries are the main exporters of coffee. Coffee is chiefly exported by Brazil and India. While the consumers of coffee are largely spread all across the world, the US is the biggest consumer of coffee in the world. Brazil, Colombia, and Vietnam make more than 50 per cent of the total amount of coffee in