All About Coffee

by William H. Ukers

There are no great coffee belts as in Mexico and Central America. Many districts are days' rides apart. The plantations are isolated, and there is lacking a co-operative spirit among the growers.

Methods of cultivating and preparing the berry for the market are substantially those that prevail elsewhere in South America. Most plantations are handled in ordinary, old-fashioned ways; but the better estates employ machinery and methods of the most advanced and improved character at all points of their operation, from the planting of the seed to the final marketing of the berry.

Java. Java, the oldest coffee-producing country in which the tree is not indigenous, was producing a high-grade coffee long before Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela entered the industry; and it held its supremacy in the world's trade for many years before the younger American producing countries were able to surpass its annual output. The first attempt to introduce the plant into Java took place in 1696, the seedlings being brought from Malabar in India and planted at Kadawoeng, near Batavia. Earthquake and flood soon destroyed the plants; and in 1699 Henricus Zwaardecroon brought the second lot of seedlings from Malabar. These became the progenitors of all the arabica coffees of the Dutch East Indies. The industry grew, and in 1711 the first Java coffee was sold at public auction in Amsterdam. Exports amounted to 116,587 pounds in 1720; and in 1724 the Amsterdam market sold 1,396,486 pounds of coffee from Java.

From the early part of the nineteenth century up to 1905, cultivation was carried on under a Dutch government monopoly—excepting for the five years, 1811–16, when the British had control of the island. The government monopoly was first established when Marshal Daendels, acting for the crown of Holland, took control of the islands from the Netherlands East India Company. Before that time, the princes of Preanger had raised all the coffee under the provisions of a treaty made in the middle of the eighteenth century, by which they paid an annual tribute in coffee to the company for the privilege of retaining their land revenues. When the Dutch government recovered the islands from the British, the plantations, which had been permitted to go to ruin, were put in order again, and the government system re-established.

A Heavy Fruiting of Coffea Robusta in Java

A modification of the first monopoly plan of the government was put into effect later in the régime of Governor Van den Bosch, and was maintained until into the twentieth century. Under the Daendels plan, each native family was required to keep 1000 coffee trees in bearing on village lands, and to give to the government two-fifths of the crop, delivered cleaned and sorted, at the government store. The natives retained the other three-fifths. Under the Van den Bosch system, each family was required to raise and care for 650 trees and to deliver the crop cleaned and sorted to the government stores at a fixed price. The government then sold the coffee at public auctions in Batavia, Padang, Amsterdam, or Rotterdam.

This method of fostering the new industry resulted in government control of fully four-fifths of the area under the crop, only the small balance being owned or worked independently by private enterprise. For many years after the cultivation had been fully started, this condition of the business persisted. Most of the privately-operated plantations had been in existence before the government had set up its monopoly system. Others were on the estates of native princes who, in treating with the Dutch, had been able to retain some of their original sovereign rights. While these plans worked well in encouraging the industry at the outset, they were not conducive to the fullest possibilities in production. Forced labor on the government plantations was naturally apt to be slow, careless, and indifferent. Private ownership and operation bettered this somewhat, the private estates being able to show annual yields of from one to two pounds per tree as compared with only a little more than one-half pound per tree on government-controlled estates.

In the course of time, the system of private ownership gradually expanded beyond that of the government; and before the end of the nineteenth century, private owners were growing and exporting more coffee than did the Javanese government. The government withdrew from the coffee business in Java in 1905, and the last government auction was held in June of that year. The monopoly in Sumatra was given up in 1908. After that, however, coffee continued to be grown on government lands, but in much less quantity than in the years immediately preceding. The Dutch government withdrew from all coffee cultivation in 1918–19.