The Coffee Belt refers to the equatorial regions of the Earth where coffee is most easily grown, between 25 degrees north of the equator and 30 degrees south, a range that almost completely overlaps the tropics, according to the National Coffee Association.
This region includes coffee producing areas such as Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, United States (California, Hawaii, Puerto Rico), Venezuela, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Timor Leste, Trinidad and Tobago, Togo, Uganda, Yemen, Zimbabwe and Zambia to name a few.
Why does coffee grow better in the Coffee Belt than elsewhere?
Just like growing the best plants for your home garden, coffee has specific needs to thrive. These include mild temperatures, high humidity, and rich soil, as well as, in some cases, altitude.
For Arabica coffee, high and mountainous regions with the right balance of sun, cloud cover, and day-night temperature differences can provide ideal conditions for coffee growth. Most of the coffee belt also has a rainy season (areas closer to the equator have more than one), which coffee plants also need.
In countries like Ethiopia and Colombia, coffee is commonly grown at high altitudes, above 1,800 meters, and high-grown coffee is typically considered high quality due to the effect these elevations have on the flavor of the cup.
However, not all coffees in the Brown Belt grow at high altitudes, especially in Brazil, which produces a huge amount of the world's coffees at much lower altitudes.
Robusta coffees grow more easily at lower elevations and can tolerate sun and drought more easily than Arabica coffee plants.
How did coffee come to be grown in the coffee belt?
Commercial coffee cultivation is believed to date back to Yemen, where beans from Ethiopia, considered the birthplace of coffee and where coffee grows wild, were brought in the 15th century or earlier. Both countries are located within the coffee belt.
Can coffee grow in other parts of the world?
Hobbyist growers and coffee enthusiasts have grown coffee in climates further north and south than the Coffee Belt, but it is simply not practical to grow coffee on the scale necessary to make production worthwhile outside the Coffee Belt.
This may change with climate change, as areas further from the equator become warmer and potentially more hospitable to coffee growing, but this is not a change most of us expect.
Climate change
The coffee belt is extremely susceptible to climate change and is already experiencing its effects, with higher temperatures and less abundant rainfall in equatorial regions in recent decades. Increases in heat, whether extreme or even mild, have a detrimental effect on cultivated coffee plantations. Even worse, these higher temperatures and lower rainfall allow the proliferation of threats to the coffee plants themselves, such as coffee rust and the coffee borer.
Although agricultural scientists are working hard on more disease- and pest-resistant cultivars, it is indisputable that climate change poses a serious threat to coffee cultivation as we know it. By 2050, climate scientists warn, the amount of usable coffee-growing land in the Coffee Belt could be as little as half of what it is today.
Conclusion
The Coffee Belt is another name for the strip of land between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, where ideal conditions exist for growing coffee.
While growing conditions are similar across countries within the Coffee Belt, variations in soil, temperature, rainfall, and altitude greatly affect the flavor of the beans produced by the coffee plant.
Coffee is a complicated crop to grow and requires precise temperature, humidity, and soil quality to grow to its full potential. If any piece of the puzzle is missing, the coffee beans produced won't be good enough to compete with the discerning coffee-drinking customer.
So the next time you choose your favorite coffee, check the origin and analyze the areas of the coffee belt so you can recognize the journey our beans have been through.