Yemen produces coffee, Egypt cotton, Iraq dates, Palestine oranges and Syria trouble.
John Gunther
In the article ‘The History of Coffee’ we learn that coffee originated from a country called Ethiopia. Here is where we are wrong…
Whilst the coffee tree has its roots in Ethiopia, the coffee drink originated in Yemen. The bean is said to have been first consumed as a beverage in western Yemen in 1450 by the country’s mystical Sufi monk population who used the drink to help them stay awake during all-night meditations. This discovery marked the beginning of the world’s coffee drinking culture as we know it today – from plain black brews with no sugar or milk to adding chocolate flavoring and cream.
What makes Yemeni coffee so unique from other coffees?
Once the fruit is dried, it’s easy to separate the beans from the husks, which are discarded. This leaves a very irregular and rough seed, which is the hallmark of Yemen coffee beans. The millstones that grind the beans are turned by donkeys or camels. Even when grinding is powered by small gasoline engines, progress is slow with small output batches. Only the more aged and richly flavored beans are exported since they fetch a higher price. The ancient coffee is cultivated is in a high altitude and drought-prone land which is the ideal climate. While these processing factors add to the rarity of these low production crops, it also accounts for the unique character of Yemen Coffee’s special flavor profile.
As coffee became more and more in demand, colonial trading companies such as the Dutch, French and British East India Companies began smuggling beans out of Yemen and planting them in their own countries under colonial rule. Eventually, they began producing and exporting their own coffee, typically under forced cultivation systems in which farmers were forced to produce and sell coffee at a price and volume stated by the colonial trading company.
With all these sources of cheap coffee available and no quality-based differentiation from the market, Yemen could not compete and its market share began to shrink rapidly. Over just a few centuries, Yemen went from being the world’s only coffee exporting country to having a microscale share of the market. By 1800, Yemen was producing just 6% of the world’s coffee. Today, it’s less than 0.1%.
As coffee prices remained low over the centuries that followed, Yemen’s coffee industry was neglected and downgraded to a thing of the past.
Today, coffee cultivation has all but disappeared. What has made matters worse is that Yemeni farmers can make far more money growing the narcotic plant ‘qat’ than they can coffee, and due to the country’s dire economic situation, many have reluctantly switched over.
