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.