The History of Coffee in Brazil
Love and Theft: Francisco de Melo Palheta
Legend has it that in 1727, Sergeant Major Francisco de Melo Palheta was dispatched to settle a land dispute between French Guiana and Dutch Guiana. He arrived in Cayenne intent on smuggling out the coveted coffee plants that were so closely guarded. Setting his eyes on Madame D’Orvilliers, the Governor of Cayenne’s wife, he hatched a plan, and at the a closing banquet before his departure, his amorous exploits paid off, as she handed him a bouquet containing the seedling that would become the progenitor of the Brazilian coffee industry.
Though amorous motivation for for the exchange has been discputed, Palheta was, as a matter of record, sent to French Guiana by the governor of Maranhão e Grão-Pará in northeastern Brasil, and later described how he was able to bring back thousands of seeds and several plants.
Throughout the 18th century, coffee production increased in northeastern Brasil, although it was never considered more than a minor local crop.
Brazil Becomes the Land of Coffee
The first coffee plantation was established by 1770 in the state of Rio de Janeiro and a small export trade to Europe soon developed. However, it was not until the 1800s that coffee production exploded in Brazil. The year 1800 saw, 1,720 pounds of coffee exports, and by 1820 that number had reached 12,896,000 pounds. By 1840, that number had grown to 137,300,000, and by at the end of the century Brazil was exporting over a billion pounds of coffee annually (Ukers, 1922).
From the Baixada Fluminese region in the state of Rio de Janeiro, coffee production began expanding into the Vale do Paraíba, moving south and west into Minas Gerais and into the then province of São Paulo. By the late 1800s, São Paulo was the coffee center of the Brazil as production moved from the now-depleted soils of the Vale do Paraíba westward to more fertile soils, a better climate, and flatter topography around Campinas, Rio Claro, and Jundiai.
Production increases were largely fueled by slave labor, with estimates that over 5 million African slaves—more than half of those imported to the New World—were brought to Brazil (Adams, 1925). While the institution of African slavery had existed in Brazil since the 16th century, it grew considerably in the 17th century with the expansion of sugarcane production and gold and diamond mining. Abolition appeared imminent in 1826 with signing of the British-Brazilian Treaty, which set to end slavery by 1830, but it would take over 50 years for the practice to die, as so many directly profited from the slave trade and the government lacked enforcement capabilities. In total, between 1800 and 1850, the Brazilian agriculture and coffee boom absorbed well over 2 million African slaves.
Immigration and Coffee Migration
As coffee moved westward in São Paulo, growers faced a “perfect storm” of labor headwinds: increased labor demanded by higher productivity, a lack of slave labor, driving a more expensive slave market, and growing resentment of the institution of slavery. Although Brazil would not officially abolish slavery until 1888, it was already in decline thanks to measures such as the Aberdeen Act, passed in the United Kingdom of 1845, which gave the Royal Navy authority to stop and search any Brazilian vessel suspected of transporting slaves and to arrest slave traders. This directly led to higher costs and a diminishing supply of slave labor. The Law of Free Birth (also known as the Rio Branco Law) of 1871 granted freedom to all newborn children of slaves and slaves belonging to the state and royal family. Owners of the children’s slave parents were to provide care for the children until the age of 21, when they would turn them over to the state for monetary compensation.
Slavery was finally abolished in Brazil with the passage of the Lei Aurea, or Golden Law, on May 13, 1888. This quickly led to a political policy of immigration to supply labor on the ever-growing coffee plantations. Brazil had first experimented with importing foreign labor to work the coffee fields 20 years earlier at Fazenda Ibicada in the state of São Paulo. Between 1847 and 1857, plantation owner and senator Nicolau Vergueiro brought in around 180 families, mainly Swiss-Germans, to work on his farm. But his experiment ended in rebellion and failure. After all, plantation managers were accustomed to dealing with slaves, not citizens with rights and the expectations that go along with them. What’s more, the contractual obligations that Vergueiro imposed on the immigrants were far from just. He charged them for their transportation to and settlement in Brazil, and then imposed substantial interests on those costs, resulting in de facto indentured servitude. This situation was far different from what they had been promised, and under the leadership of Swiss schoolteacher Thomas Davatz, who had immigrated to Ibicada and was appalled by the situation he observed, the immigrant families revolted. Switzerland was forced to halt emigration to Brazil, and the Empire of Brazil subsequently reconsidered legislation regarding work conditions and the regulation of importation of foreign labor.
Overproduction
In time, coffee production increased to the point where it outgrew demand, and prices began to fall. Brazil's New Republic government (after a peaceful coup d'etat of Dom Pedro II's monarch) initially responded by printing more money, but this resulted in high inflation and a greatly devalued currency. While this pleased the powerful coffee growers, who received their money in foreign currency, it wreaked havoc on internal markets and made it difficult for Brazil to service its foreign debt. Coffee prices, which had fluctuated between 14 and 18 cents per pound on the New York market between 1888 and 1895, sunk to ten cents after a bumper crop in 1896, and by 1901 the price of a pound of coffee had fallen to six cents. After a failed international attempt to shore up prices at the first International Congress for the Study of the Production and Consumption of Coffee, Brazil decided to go it alone. In 1906, representatives from São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas Gerais—Brazil's three largest coffee-growing states—signed the treaty of Taubate which set for a valorization scheme in which the government would agree to buy surplus coffee and keep it off the market to ensure higher prices. The valorization scheme successfully inhibited a free-fall of coffee pricing, though it did little to discourage coffee production, since growers now had the advantage of a price floor. The scheme was repeated after the first World War, but as Brazil’s near-monopoly on worldwide coffee production declined, it became necessary to internationalize the valorization scheme across other producing countries. This was accomplished through the Inter-American Coffee Agreement and later the International Coffee Agreement. The International Coffee Agreement, administered by the International Coffee Organization, lasted until 1989, when the United States withdrew its support. Shortly after this, coffee prices dropped substantially.
Specialty Coffee in Brazil
In the 1990s, a movement in Brazil began to establish the country, already the world’s largest coffee producer, as a producer of some of the best coffees in the world. Whereas the ICA quota system had set up state purchasing of coffee, and the subsequent market system did little to reward high-quality production, the Specialty Coffee movement that had started in the U.S. was growing in strength, and quality-focused consumers were now willing to reward growers for their efforts.
The Brazilian Specialty Coffee Association (BSCA) was formed, and the Cup of Excellence, now the world’s foremost coffee quality competition, was organize by the BSCA and others in 1998. Through competitions such as the Cup of Excellence, diverse regions such as Piata, Araponga, Vale da Grama, Piraju, and Carmo de Minas have established themselves as unique micro-climates capable of producing world-class coffees.
Brazilian coffee quality has continued to increase, and over the course of one generation, many Brazilian coffee farms, some known nationally for their coffee quality, have gained international renown for producing some of the world’s best coffees.