From Ethiopian forest to the New York “C”

Every cup starts as the seed of a cherry on a shrub that once grew only in the forests of East Africa. This page follows it from there to a Colombian hillside and on to the futures screen in New York that sets what a farmer is paid.

Origins

Arabica, the coffee Colombia grows, is native to the highland forests of southwestern Ethiopia, where wild trees still grow in the understory. Botanically it is a natural hybrid of two other coffee species, which is part of why it tastes sweeter and more complex than its cousin Robusta.

You may have heard of Kaldi, the goatherd whose goats danced after eating coffee cherries. It is a good story, but it is a legend: it first appears in writing in 1671, centuries after coffee was already being drunk.

The earliest reliable accounts of coffee as a drink come from Yemen in the mid-1400s, where Sufi mystics drank it to stay awake during night prayers. Yemen also gave coffee its first great trade port, Mocha, a name that stuck to the drink long after the port declined.

How it spread

From Yemen, coffee travelled the pilgrim and trade routes of the Islamic world. Coffeehouses opened in Istanbul in the 1550s and became places to talk, play and argue politics, which is why rulers more than once tried to ban them.

Europe followed in the 1600s: Venice, then Oxford and London, then Paris and Vienna. For a while Yemen guarded its monopoly by exporting only roasted or boiled beans that could not sprout. It did not last:

• The Dutch planted coffee on Java in the 1690s, starting the plantation trade in Asia.
• The French took a seedling to Martinique in the 1720s; its descendants spread across the Caribbean.
• Brazil got its first plants from French Guiana in 1727 and, by the 1800s, was the world’s largest producer, as it still is.

Coffee reaches Colombia

Jesuit missionaries are usually credited with bringing coffee to what is now Colombia in the 1700s; the priest José Gumilla described it along the Orinoco in 1741.

The first recorded exports left through the customs house at Cúcuta in 1835: about 2,500 sacks, shipped down the rivers to Lake Maracaibo. Northeastern Colombia, Santander and Norte de Santander, was the first coffee region.

A local story explains part of that spread. Francisco Romero, parish priest of Salazar de las Palmas, is said to have given his parishioners an unusual penance: plant coffee trees instead of praying rosaries.

The center of gravity moved west during the 19th century. Families from Antioquia settled the slopes of the central mountains, founding towns across what are now Caldas, Risaralda and Quindío, the Eje Cafetero. Their small family farms, rather than large estates, shaped Colombian coffee: by the early 1900s coffee was the country’s main export, and it is still grown by more than half a million families.

The institutions behind “Café de Colombia”

• 1927, the FNC. Growers founded the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros in Medellín. It runs a purchase guarantee (it will buy coffee at a published price), the extension service, and the national coffee fund.
• 1938, Cenicafé. The FNC’s research center, which breeds varieties and studies how to grow and process coffee.
• 1958, Juan Valdez. A fictional grower and his mule Conchita gave Colombian coffee a face in foreign markets, one of the first campaigns to sell an origin rather than a brand.
• 1962–1989, the quota years. Under the International Coffee Agreement, producing and consuming countries set export quotas that kept prices stable. When the quotas ended in 1989, prices fell sharply, and the early 2000s brought one of the worst coffee crises on record.
• 2005, Castillo. Cenicafé released Castillo, a variety resistant to leaf rust. When rust and heavy La Niña rains struck in 2008–2011, Colombia’s harvest fell below 8 million bags, its lowest in decades. Replanting with resistant varieties brought production back.
• 2007, protected origin. “Café de Colombia” became a Protected Geographical Indication in the European Union, one of the first from outside Europe.
• 2011, UNESCO. The Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia, in Caldas, Quindío, Risaralda and Valle del Cauca, became a World Heritage site.

How coffee is traded today

The world produces around 170 million 60-kg bags of coffee a year. Roughly 60% is Arabica, grown at altitude and prized for flavor, and 40% is Robusta, hardier and more bitter, used in blends and instant coffee. Brazil is by far the largest producer, followed by Vietnam (mostly Robusta), then Colombia, Indonesia and Ethiopia.

Most Arabica is priced off the “C” contract on ICE Futures in New York, quoted in US cents per pound. The C price is a benchmark, not what any farmer is paid: each coffee trades at a differential, a premium or discount for its origin and quality. Washed Colombian coffee usually trades at a premium.

The FNC reference price you see on our market page turns all of that into pesos. It starts from the New York price, adds the Colombian differential, converts at the day’s exchange rate, and is quoted per carga of 125 kg of dry parchment coffee. That is why a farmer’s income moves with two numbers they do not control: New York and the dollar.

A few forces shape the trade now:

• Specialty coffee. Buyers pay more for traceable lots that score well in cupping, which rewards care on the farm and in processing.
• Certifications such as Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance add requirements and, sometimes, a premium.
• The EU deforestation regulation (EUDR) will require importers to prove their coffee was not grown on land deforested after 2020. After two delays, it is set to apply from 30 December 2026 for most companies.
• The farmer’s share. Of the price of a cup sold in a café abroad, only a small part reaches the grower; most of the value is added after the coffee leaves the farm: roasting, branding and the café itself.

Sources

• Mark Pendergrast, Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World (Basic Books, 3rd ed. 2019).
• Ralph S. Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses: The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East (1985).
• Marco Palacios, El café en Colombia, 1850–1970: una historia económica, social y política (4th ed. 2009).
• Federación Nacional de Cafeteros, history of Colombian coffee.
• Cenicafé, publications on varieties and the 2008–2011 rust epidemic.
• UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia.
• International Coffee Organization, coffee market reports.
• European Union, Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 on deforestation-free products, as amended by Regulation (EU) 2025/2650.