Coffee: the heart of Brazil
A 300 year history
Coffee’s long and arduous journey began over three hundred years ago, when the plant was first imported to Brazil from Africa; the first cultivation dates back to 1727, when English and Dutch settlers began to mass produce the dark beverage; it was a time of brutal slavery, land exploitation and dangerous deforesting. This was subsequently mitigated by the abolition of slavery and the recent growth in ecological awareness (but only by a few vanguard players).
Then in 1989, the year when the Berlin wall fell in Europe and the first democratic election was held in Brazil, the coffee market, previously dominated by few multinationals (mostly German and American), was liberalized, the fixed price was dropped and the markets were opened.
Today Brazil, the tenth largest economy in the world, accounts for one third of world production, exporting 32 million sacks of coffee, of which 14 million are produced in Minas. In Belo Horizonte (the mining capital), coffee production is at the top of its exports, with employment activities affecting eight hundred thousand people directly and indirectly involving three million.
Out of the 853 cities in Minas, 600 are involved in coffee cultivation, and while Brazil is the leading world exporter with nearly 30 percent, a good 50 percent of this production is grown in Minas.
