Origin
Cultivation of the coffee seed originated in Ethiopia, in approximately 850 C.E. Farming of the coffee plant then spread to the rest of Arabia, where it was first mentioned in writing around 900 C.E. The Yemenites guarded it carefully, but some plants were eventually smuggled out to the Dutch, who kept a few plants for gardens in the Netherlands.
The Americas were first introduced to the plants around 1723.
South America is now responsible for approximately 45% of the world's total coffee exports.
Read more about this topic: Coffee Bean
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We have got rid of the fetish of the divine right of kings, and that slavery is of divine origin and authority. But the divine right of property has taken its place. The tendency plainly is towards ... “a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.””
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Each structure and institution here was so primitive that you could at once refer it to its source; but our buildings commonly suggest neither their origin nor their purpose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)