Coffee: from import to export / Coffee in Rus' / Coffee tree in the apartment
The global economy is recovering from the pandemic. One sign of this is the rise in coffee prices. Stock quotes for coffee futures collapsed in the first half of the year. People were self-isolating, sleeping as much as they wanted, and were in no hurry to go to work. The need for the invigorating alkaloid - caffeine - fell sharply. But as restrictions were lifted, the whirlwind of business life began to spin again. Chronic lack of sleep, sitting at work until late - all this increases the demand for a tonic drink. Now coffee prices have returned to the levels they were at the end of last year, when the economy was still doing well. This means that most employees are back on the job, life goes on.
The world is producing more and more coffee. Brazil is especially trying. The new agricultural year promises to be a record harvest in the entire history of mankind. Unsold stocks are also high, but prices are still soaring. This is influenced not only by the recovery in demand, but also by the unrestrained work of the dollar printing press. The money supply is growing faster than the volume of coffee in the world. Consequently, you have to pay more and more dollars for a kilogram of beans. This is one of the manifestations of inflation.
For a long time, no one knew about the invigorating properties of coffee. The plant has always been near people, but only in the Middle Ages did they guess to make a drink from it. Most likely, there were attempts to drink coffee before. People picked berries, gnawed the beans, saw that they were bitter. Spit them out and moved on, not having time to understand that this gives a tonic effect. And if they did understand, they did not pay attention to it. They did not need it.
In Rus', coffee was known since the time of Peter the Great, and already in the 19th century it became an integral part of the diet of rich people. In Goncharov's novel Oblomov. The word "coffee" and its derivatives occur 48 times. "She smiled and again began to carefully turn the handle of the coffee grinder, and her elbow described circles so quickly that Oblomov's eyes were dazzled." 160 years have passed since the publication of the novel, but grinding beans with a hand grinder is still a common practice. Not everyone has a coffee machine at home.
From the tsarist times to the present day, Russia has been increasing its coffee imports. Over the past 5 years, annual purchases have increased by 15%. This includes three types of goods: beans, ground coffee and instant. In the ranking of world importers, our country ranks 5th after the European Union, the USA, Japan and the Philippines. Imports of beans - whole and ground - are growing, while those of instant powders are falling. This is an interesting dynamic. It has three reasons. The first is the improvement of the drinking culture. Our fellow citizens increasingly use a natural product, and not the one that is sold in jars, poured with boiling water and stirred. There are more and more coffee gourmets. They appreciate the aroma, flavors, aftertaste and other properties. Instant coffee has much worse ones than natural coffee. Therefore, the demand for brewed coffee is growing in Russia. Moreover, professionally prepared.
The second reason is the availability of coffee machines. Now they are in almost every office. This dramatically reduces the demand for 3-in-1 bags and other types of instant coffee. Moreover, it is more economically profitable to buy beans than a jar of instant powder. Less human labor is invested in beans, they have low added value, and they are cheaper.
There is a third reason: Russia is starting to build its own factories for the production of instant coffee. Why buy abroad if you can make it yourself? Raw materials are imported, processed and brought to a marketable condition. As an example, I will give a plant of this profile, which recently appeared in the Leningrad region. It created 510 jobs. The volume of investments is 6.5 billion rubles. The demand for freeze-dried coffee is decreasing, but not completely disappearing, so entrepreneurs are occupying this niche.
A higher level of development of the coffee industry is to start exporting. A striking example of this is the European Union. It is the world's largest importer of coffee. It has long-standing traditions of consumption and developed processing capacities. Therefore, in terms of export of roasted beans and ground coffee, it ranks first in the world. And in second place - with a slight lag - is Switzerland. This country is considered separately, because it is not part of the EU. Coffee trees are not grown in Europe. The industry works on imported raw materials and advanced technologies for bringing it to a marketable appearance. The quality is so high that coffee from the Old World is sold all over the world, including in Crimean stores.
To grow a coffee tree, you need a tropical climate. It is unlikely that global warming will reach such a scale that this would ...