Coffee production in Brazil

History

Coffee arrived in Brazil as an imported crop, not native to the Americas. A well-known story claims the Portuguese wanted a piece of the coffee trade but couldn't get seeds from French Guiana because its governor refused to export them. Palheta was sent there to settle a border dispute, and legend has it that on his way back, he seduced the governor's wife, who handed him a bouquet hiding the seeds. That changed in the early 1800s when rising demand from the United States and Europe sparked the first of two coffee booms, lasting from the 1830s into the 1850s.

This boom helped push the decline of slavery and sped up industrialization. Plantations in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Minas Gerais expanded rapidly during the 1820s, already producing a fifth of the world's coffee. By the 1830s, coffee was Brazil's top export, making up 30% of global output. In the 1840s, those figures hit 40% for both exports and world production, cementing Brazil as the leading producer.

The early plantations relied heavily on enslaved labor, with 1.5 million people brought in to work during the first half of the 19th century.

Production

Most plantations lie in the southeastern states of Minas Gerais, São Paulo, and Paraná, where conditions are ideal; Minas Gerais alone grows about half of the national crop. Harvesting occurs during the dry season from June to September, typically as a single large annual pick. Unlike many coffee-growing regions, Brazil uses the dry process almost exclusively: whole berries are cleaned and sun-dried for 8 to 10 days (or up to four weeks in poor weather), then hulled, sorted, graded, and packed into 60-kilogram bags.

Export

Coffee has long been a key export for Brazil, but its share has dropped sharply over the past half-century. Brazil now drinks more coffee than any other country, overtaking the United States around the mid-2010s, though it ranks 14th in per capita consumption.

Along with Ethiopia, it is one of the few major producers with a large domestic market. Brazil does not tax coffee exports, but it applies a 10% duty on imported green and roasted coffee and 16% on soluble coffee. Unprocessed beans enter the U.S., EU, and Japan duty-free, while processed forms face a 7.5% tariff in the EU and 10% in Japan; shipments to the U.S. remain tariff-free.