Coffee produced in Yunnan is an important raw material for coffee drinks.

According to Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, November 4, British media said that China is traditionally famous for producing fragrant tea, but the country is becoming a major Asian producer of another beverage ingredient (high-quality Arabica coffee beans).

According to a report on the Financial Times website on November 2, international commodity traders and roasters said that coffee produced in Yunnan, China, which is famous for its low consistency and fruity flavor, has become an important raw material for Europeans to make coffee drinks.

Desmet, head of Nestle's coffee agricultural service team in China, said: "the mild taste and aroma of Yunnan Arabica coffee beans are similar to products from Honduras and Guatemala."

More and more farmers in Yunnan are turning to the coffee industry because the income of coffee is higher than other crops, the report said. In 2012, local farmers earned twice as much as tea to grow coffee on the same area of land, Desmet said.

Nestl é has been operating in Yunnan since the late 1980s, providing training services to growers and buying coffee locally. Since 2005, the number of suppliers has increased from 147to more than 2000. At present, the total number of coffee farmers in Yunnan has exceeded 80,000, and many of them grow coffee and tea at the same time.

Robusta coffee beans are the main varieties of coffee beans produced in Asia, which are mainly produced in Vietnam and Indonesia. This low-quality coffee bean is the raw material of instant coffee. Arabica beans are mainly used to make cappuccino and espresso. The coffee beans were introduced to Yunnan by a French missionary in the late 1880s, but it was not until a hundred years later that the local coffee industry really developed with the help of the Chinese government and the United Nations Development Program.

Over the past decade, China's coffee exports have been growing steadily, from 137000 bags (60kg each) in 1998 to 1.1 million bags in 2012, on a par with Costa Rica and close to 1 per cent of world exports.