Coffee – Caffee, Coffea arabica
Within the PermaTree FoodForest we grow high diversity of fruits.
Coffee is a plant and the name of the drink that is made from this plant. The coffee plant is a bush or tree that can grow up to ten meters high, but is usually cut at maximum 2 meters. Coffee plants originally grew in the region of Ethiopia in Africa, and now also grows in South and Central America.
Status of Coffee at PermaTree
Currently (2018) we focus to grow coffee just for our own use. The balance of the ecosystems is not yet fully restored and there are many “plagas” which bother with coffee in our region. This situation will change in short or long term. This is why we have decided to rather focus on a local coffee alternative which is something between coffee, tea and cacao called Guayusa.
History of Coffee
The earliest evidence of coffee drinking is from the 15th century, in the Sufi monasteries of Yemen.
According to legend, ancestors of today’s Oromo people in a region of Kaffa in Ethiopia, Africa were believed to have been the first to recognize the energizing effect of the coffee plant. The story of Kaldi, the 9th-century Ethiopian goatherd who discovered coffee when he noticed how excited his goats became after eating the beans from a coffee plant, did not appear in writing until 1671.
By the 16th century, it had reached the rest of the Middle East, South India (Coorg), Persia, Turkey, Horn of Africa, and northern Africa. Coffee then spread to the Balkans, Italy and to the rest of Europe, to South East Asia and then to America.
Back in 1870, Sri Lanka was the largest coffee producer in the world! At the time, it was a British colony known as “Ceylon” and the small island supplied Europe with much of its coffee until the first signs of a rust outbreak appeared in 1875. The fungus spread quickly and the colonizers failed to slow infection rates, resulting in the loss of 95 percent of the coffee harvest in less than 20 years …
Coffee and the environment
There are many controversy associated with coffee cultivation and its impact on the environment… Climate change threatens coffee growers in Latin America and the rest of the blue planet. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states “the suitability for coffee crops in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and El Salvador will be reduced by 40 percent” with increasing of temperatures. – Source.
Coffee consumption
The coffee drink is made from the seeds of the coffee plant, called coffee beans. Coffee is usually served hot, and is a popular drink in many countries. Coffee contains a chemical called caffeine, a mild drug that keeps people awake.
Sipping two to three cups per day is healthy, and most likely beneficial. On the other hand coffee does have side effects too.
There are many ways to brew coffee: Boiling, Pressure, Gravity and Steeping.
