How Coffee Travels the World

Billions of people start the day with a cup of coffee. Hardly any of them stop to think about the long journey those beans have made before reaching the cup. Coffee is one of the most widely traded products in the world, and the path from farm to mug can cross several continents along the way.

Most coffee is grown in a band of warm, mountainous countries near the equator. The biggest producers include Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, and Ethiopia. Many of the farmers work on small plots of land, and they pick the bright red coffee "cherries" by hand. Inside each cherry sit two seeds, which are the beans that will later be roasted.

Once the cherries have been picked, the beans are washed, dried, and packed into large sacks. Trucks carry the sacks to a port, and from there a ship takes them to importers in Europe, North America, and Asia. The journey by sea can take several weeks. When the beans finally arrive, roasting companies buy them and heat the green beans until they turn dark brown and give off that familiar smell.

From the roaster, the beans move on again. They reach supermarkets, cafés, and offices, where customers finally meet them. What surprises a lot of coffee drinkers is that the farmer who grew the beans usually receives only a small share of the final price. Most of the value is added later, during shipping, roasting, and selling.

Over the past few years, organisations such as Fairtrade have tried to give coffee farmers a larger share of the profit, though the practice is still far from universal.