COFFEECONOMICS
74
REVISTA ACADÉMICA ECO (23) : 73-92, JULIO-DICIEMBRE DE 2020
1. A general brief of coffee
The origin of coffee goes back to Ethiopia, Africa. Henceforward, coffee has a long
history with different transcendental events happening as of the 15th century. This
prolonged history of coffee involves dynamic transformations in the production,
trading and consumption of coffee until the present day. The history of coffee
trading can be divided into three large periods: (i) Coffee arrives from Ethiopia
to the Middle East (Arabian Peninsula) in the 15th century. (ii) From the Arabian
Peninsula, coffee trading to Europe starts in the 17th century. (iii) Finally, coffee
production and trading moves from Europe to America in the 18th century. The
mechanism applied by all the European empires for the production and trading
of coffee in different parts of the American continent was based on the policy of
invasion of new territories (conquered colonies) through the use of force, violence
and repression of native peoples, and through the exploitation of its natural
resources. The most powerful and largest European empires of the 17th and 18th
centuries were the British, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Dutch empires. The
production of coffee in America was based on the use of large coffee plantations
together with the use of intensive slave labour (both indigenous and from Africa)
for many centuries. The coffee-producing colonies conquered by the Europeans
in the American, Asian and African continents can be divided into the following
zones: North America (today’s southern Mexico), controlled by the Spanish
empire; Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa
Rica) controlled by the Spanish empire; Caribbean (Jamaica, ruled by the British
empire; Haiti, ruled by the French empire; Trinidad and Tobago; ruled by the British
empire); South East Asia (Vietnam, ruled by the French; Indonesia, ruled by the
Dutch; Laos, ruled by the French, and Papua New Guinea, ruled by the British and
Dutch empires); India, ruled by the British; South America (Colombia, Brazil, Peru,
Ecuador, and Bolivia) ruled by the Spanish empires.
The fast global expansion of the coffee market in different places around the world
requires a deep evaluation of its four main players, that is, the producers, brokers,
sellers, and consumers (buyers) as a whole, whose interaction in the coffee market
structure was evaluated in the present paper by a mechanism based on the creation
of different indicators and analytical tools to assess the risk and performance of
the coffee market structure.
The first players in the coffee market structure are the coffee producers. This
research study presents a list of the top coffee producers by country, continent
and participation percentage in global coffee production. The American continent
(Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Peru, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El