Coffee Production in Indonesia - Current Status of The Industry

Current Status of The Industry

C. canephora replaced C. liberica and is still the stock crop today. It is not the coffee Indonesia is famous for, but makes up some 88% of exports from the country.

Disaster (disease and natural), World War II and the struggle for independence all played a big part in the changes that are seen in Indonesian coffee today. In the early part of the 20th century, the coffee industry was controlled by Dutch plantation owners and the colonial government. Infrastructure was developed in East and Central Java in particular to make the shipping of commodities such as coffee as easy as possible. Prior to World War II, Central Java in particular had a very strong rail transportation system that brought coffee, sugar, pepper, tea and tobacco out of the province to the port city of Semarang. Coffee in Central Java was primarily C. canephora, while the government estates (Kayu Mas, Blewan, Jampit) in East Java were C. arabica. The mountain area stretching from Jember in East Java through to the port of Banyuwangi was heavily planted in both C. arabica and C. canephora. C. arabica was farmed on plantations at higher elevations, while C. canephora was grown at lower elevations.

In January 2007, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) reported that land was illegally cleared for coffee farming in Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park on the island of Sumatra. The protected park is home to endangered tigers, elephants and rhinos, and WWF predicts that these species will be extinct in a decade should the clearing and farming continue. WWF states that the illegal coffee is sold to Western companies such as Nestlé and Kraft Foods.

After independence, the plantations throughout Indonesia either came under the control of the new government or were abandoned. Today close to 92% of coffee production is in the hands of small farmers or cooperatives.

Read more about this topic:  Coffee Production In Indonesia

Famous quotes containing the words current, status and/or industry:

    A man is a little thing whilst he works by and for himself, but, when he gives voice to the rules of love and justice, is godlike, his word is current in all countries; and all men, though his enemies are made his friends and obey it as their own.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.
    —Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)

    It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterwards. The fortune of our lives therefore depends on employing well the short period of our youth.
    Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)