A KEYHOLE INTO COFFEE

Coffee is a modern day elixir and a booming business too. Historians in the future will do worse than use coffee as a keyhole looking into modern society, its daily practices and its global economy. Looking into coffee’s production and distribution spells a story of both inequality and environmental destruction. It also spells a story of art and socialisation.

 

Noting that the original consumers of coffee were Sufi mystics consuming it in arabia as a psychoactive drink, one could venture to remark on its almost spiritual role in modern life, its consumption linking things as central as moods, work, sleep and social interactions. 

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Coffee originated in the rift valley of Africa, in Ethiopia and was originally consumed for its fruit and not its seeds. After some time, it began to be cultivated in Yemen and spread via the trade routes through Africa, Asia and Europe, especially through the Ottoman empire.

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Today coffee is a global household and workplace staple, including in South Africa. Its global value chain, worth around  €500-billion, makes for fascinating, if not distressing analysis. For example, farmers of coffee earn 3 cents from $3 cappucino. meaning only 1% of the value is the cultivation of the bean. The other 99% consists of some combination of distribution, roasting, packaging, marketing and more.

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In recent research conducted by Italcham into South Africa’s coffee sector, it was established that South Africa’s coffee market has experienced constant growth for more than a decade, with total consumption increasing by around 30% between 2017 and 2023.

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South Africa only produces a small percentage of its own coffee and during 2022 imported 20-thousand tons of coffee, to the value of €35-million. What’s more is that more than €7-million of this coffee came from Italy accounting for just about 20% of South Africa’s coffee.

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Italy ranks 5th in South Africa’s supply of coffee, behind Switzerland, Vietnam, Brazil and Tanzania - in that order. Switzerland, as the top coffee exporter to South Africa, and one of the top five globally, strikes one as odd, as Switzerland does not grow a single coffee bean. Neither does Italy.

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Without the correct conditions for growing coffee, what is the connection between Italy and this almost sacred bean? This is an old, fascinating and sweeping historical story. In Italy, like in most of Europe, coffee arrived in the second half of the 1500s century through the trade routes of the Mediterranean. In 1580 some of Italy’s first imported coffee came into the Republic of Venice from Egypt, and soon coffee shops (which are as old as the story of coffee itself) started opening one by one.

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Some representatives of the Catholic Church, ever powerful in Italy, opposed the introduction of coffee, believing it to be the "Devil's drink", but Pope Clement VIII, after trying the aromatic drink himself, gave it his blessing, thus further boosting its commercial success and distribution.

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In Turin, in 1933, Alfonso Bialetti invented the first moka pot by observing the lisciveuse, a steam pot utilized at that time for laundry. In 1946 his son Renato started industrial production, selling millions of moka pots in one year, versus only 70000 sold by his father in the previous 10, making the coffee maker (as well as coffee) an icon of Italy in the world. 

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If nothing else, looking into the keyhole onto the world of coffee, one is struck by just how much there is to discover when one asks questions about the everyday. All around us, mundane things are products of a fascinating history. A greater truth lies underneath. At Italcham, when we conduct this market research, we seek to uncover the true dynamics of the world so as to act better in it.