A brief introduction to the history of coffee beans in Indonesia

A Brief History of Coffee

In 1696, the Dutch viceroy in Malabar, India, sent a batch of coffee seedlings to the Dutch viceroy in Batavia (present-day Jakarta Jarkata), the first coffee cultivation in Indonesia. However, the first batch of coffee seedlings were washed away by floods. Batavia received gifts again in 1699, this time the coffee seedlings survived and the first harvest was ushered in 1701, starting the coffee journey in Indonesia.

Initially, coffee was grown in Jakarta and nearby areas, and later, the cultivation area gradually expanded to central and eastern Java, Sulawesi, Sumatra and Bali. At the same time, coffee was also grown in Flores and Timor, which were then part of Portugal territory, in eastern Indonesia, but the origins of coffee seedlings were different.

Indonesian coffee was supplied to the European market in 1711, when Indonesia was the first country outside Africa and Arabia to grow coffee on a large scale. In the 1780s it became the world's largest coffee exporter. Java coffee started here.

Indonesia's coffee boom failed to last, and coffee production was fatally hit in the late 18th century when leaf rust, first discovered in West Java, spread rapidly and destroyed Indonesia's Arabica coffee plantations. The leadership of the coffee trade was replaced by the American-producing countries. it is worth mention, however, that this leaf rust disaster did not affect that eastern Indonesian producing region, namely Flores and Timor, where some coffee trees today have genes dating back to the sixteenth and seventeenth century.

According to ICO data, Indonesia ranked third in coffee production in the world in 2013, although 80% was Robusta.