Exportation

The first coffee seeds arrived in Brazil in 1727. Until the end of the 18th Century, Haiti was the main coffee bean exporter. But Haitian coffee production faced a crisis, because of Haiti’s long war for independence against France.  Those circumstances contributed to the expansion of coffee plantations in Brazil and, in 1779, the first bags of coffee were shipped abroad: 79 arrobas, slightly more than 19 bags.

In 1806, almost 30 year later, exports reached approximately 80,000 arrobas approximately 20,000 bags. Coffee plantation expansion attracted Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese immigrants to work in coffee harvests.  Foreign exchange resulting from the sale of coffee  accelerated the national urban development, especially in the State of São Paulo, where new railways and secondary railway lines were built to transport coffee from the inland regions to the Port of Santos.

From 1800 to 1929, coffee was the main source of wealth in Brazil and was nicknamed Brazilian green gold. The beans brought prosperity to coffee growers who built mansions and theaters, such as the Theatro Municipal de São Paulo, in 1911, whose architectural style was inspired in the Paris Opera House.

During a long time, Brazilian coffee was better known as Santos-type coffee. In 1922, the Coffee Exchange was inaugurated in Santos, projected to operate not only as a commodity exchange, but also as a bank to encourage and guarantee the commodity production.

The coffee cycle golden age ended in 1929, when the New York Stock Exchange collapsed. This forced the Brazilian federal government to burn over 71,000 bags of coffee, an amount that at the time was enough to guarantee world consumption for three years. The event led to a reorganization  of the Brazilian coffee crop map, which is currently present in 15 States.

Slowly, Brazil restarted production and exportation. In1999, at the end of the 20th Century,  Conselho dos Exportadores de Café do Brasil

[Brazilian Coffee Exporters Council]– Cecafé, an entity created to represent the Brazilian coffee export industry. In that year, Brazilian coffee exports reached 23 million bags. Currently, Brazil is the largest coffee exporter of the world. Last year, exports reached 36.8 million bags, surpassing the 35.4 million bags record registered in the previous year.