Welcome to Big Agriculture, a series where I chronicle the most important agricultural
crops in the world.
You can check out the first video in the series, about maize, by clicking the card in the top
right, or clicking the link in the description.
Today, I'll be talking about a plant that is part of many folks' morning routines:
coffee.
There are two widely grown species of coffee, Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora.
Arabica coffee makes up about 80% of coffee production, and Robusta coffee, the common
name for Coffea canephora makes up the remaining 20%.
It takes a coffee plant three to four years to bear fruit, and the fruit it produces are
actually drupes, a botanical classification that also includes stone fruits like peaches
and apricots.
They're referred to as coffee cherries, and after fertilization of the flower, take
about 15 weeks to development.
Each cherry contains two coffee "beans."
Once they're red and ripe, the cherries are ready to be harvested.
This is done in one of two ways, by hand or with a harvesting machine.
Most coffee is harvested by hand, the fruits deposited into a basket, and then they must
be processed.
There are two types of processing, the dry method and the wet method.
The dry method is simple; the cherries are spread out and allowed to air dry.
This can take a few weeks, and the cherries are then hulled to produce the final beans.
In the wet method, the cherries are pulped, removing the outer layer and leaving only
the beans with a thin layer of parchment skin.
They're then sorted in water.
Good, ripe beans sink, while under-ripe beans float and can be removed.
The processed beans are then air dried.
After either processing method, the beans are hulled if needed, and stored until they
can be roasted.
And fun fact: dark roast coffee has less caffeine than light roast coffee.
Many people assume that the bolder taste of dark roast means it has more caffeine, but
the longer roasting process actually decreases the amount of caffeine.
The USDA estimates that 159 million bags of coffee will be produced in the 2017/2018 season.
So, the world produces a lot of coffee.
The countries with the greatest amount of coffee production include Brazil, Vietnam,
Indonesia, Colombia, though coffee is grown in dozens of countries.
It's thought that the modern day coffee industry began in Yemen, which began exporting
coffee in the 1500s.
The traditional anecdote goes that coffee was discovered by an Ethiopian shepherd named
Kaldi, who noticed that his goats gained a lot of energy after eating the beans of the
plant.
There is no hard evidence of this particular story, though, but coffee does grow natively
across Africa.
There are, however, a few possible references to coffee consumption earlier than the 1500s.
A medical textbook from the early 10th century speaks of "buncham," which is thought
to be coffee.
And a medical encyclopedia from the turn of the eleventh century includes what is thought
to be coffee among the 760 drugs listed.
Written by Avicenna, it mentions a light yellow bean that clears the skin and "gives an
excellent smell to the body."
And as is usually the case, where there are plants there are pollinators.
A coffee plant has white, fragrant flowers that grow in dense bunches.
A 2003 study looked at fruit production as related to how a flower was pollinated.
It found that cross-pollinated flowers produced more fruit, so it would likely improve yields
by encouraging the presence of more pollinators near coffee plants.
All right, that has been a small sampling of the many aspects of the coffee industry.
If you have any questions, or cool facts about coffee, please leave those in the comments!
Please also leave suggestions for future topics in my Big Agriculture series.
As always, thank you for watching, and a special thank you to my supporters on Patreon.
I'll see you next week!
For more infomation >> Mayor hosts "Coffee with Kabat" - Duration: 0:55. 
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