Overall, more than 200 million people grow coffee as a means of economic survival. Most estimates conclude that large coffee plantations make up only 20% of the world supply, with smaller farms (known in the business as smallholdings) accounting for the rest. Typically, a small farm depends solely upon coffee for its economic revenue and balances this with subsistence farming of a multitude of other crops on the same land.
The right environmental conditions
Due to quite particular environmental conditions, most coffee around the world is grown around the bean belt, aka the equator. These delicate coffee plants need a tropical climate where there is no frost, a ton of sunshine, and plenty of water. Not too much, and not too little of all of these things is needed. Your average coffee plant has very particular needs so you can’t just pop a seed in the ground and hope for the best.
Stick those seeds in moist, fertile, well-drained soil, under a shaded canopy that receives a healthy dose of sunshine every day. Volcanic soil is amazing for the growth of your coffee plant, but clay and alluvial will also get the job done. Some farms will have native crops growing alongside the coffee plants, providing shade and nutrients in the soil to help the coffee grow flavorful coffee cherries.
High elevation
Needless to say, due to the growing conditions needed, coffee grows best at high altitudes. This is why you’ll see the elevation or altitude statistic on our coffee descriptions. The higher the coffee was grown, the better tasting it will be.
The basics of growing coffee
Growing coffee is not a quick-fix money-making plan! Far from it. Coffee plants (trees) will take 3 to 5 years to bear fruit once you’ve planted your seeds. This is called the growth phase. Next up is called the productivity phase, when the coffee tree starts producing cherries. This will last anywhere from 15 to 25 years after which the tree declines and dies.
Each coffee cherry has 2 coffee seeds inside the fruit, known to me and you as green coffee beans. Each coffee plant produces 2,000 coffee cherries a year, which is about 4,000 coffee beans. That works out at roughly one pound of roasted coffee per healthy tree, per year. That’s a whole lot of work for just one pound of coffee!
Once the tree hits the productivity phase, the cherries can take from 7 to 11 months to ripen, and when ripe, the cherries turn a deep, bright red, the size of a large grape. Beautiful jasmine-scented white flowers bloom for a few days to signal that it’s time to pick these red ripe cherries, while new green cherries start to form.
This requires the close attention of coffee farmers and the pickers, as high quality, better tasting coffee is largely a result of picking the cherry when it’s at peak red ripeness. So this is done by hand during harvest, once or twice a year. When a basket full of cherries has been picked, they are taken down the mountainside to be processed, sorted and sold as green coffee.
