Brazilian Coffee, 1922
Agricultural maps of Brazil, freely and courteously handed to any visitor at the Escriptorio do Informaçōes do Brasil in the rue St. Honoré in Paris, show a huge patch of…
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From Brazil Today and Tomorrow by L. E. Elliott, 1922.
Agricultural maps of Brazil, freely and courteously handed to any visitor at the Escriptorio do Informaçōes do Brasil in the rue St. Honoré in Paris, show a huge patch of green in the middle of S. Paulo State and extending to a point very near the frontier of Minas Geraes. This patch represents some seven hundred and twenty-two million coffee trees, covering a total space of over two million acres.
At least one hundred million pounds sterling is invested in coffee plantations, and, with an output of an average twelve million bags, income from crops is not less than twenty-five million pounds sterling a year.
Advancing into the interior when the advent of railroads made cultivation of the sertāo a commercial possibility, the culture of coffee in Brazil and especially in Sao Paulo is carried on upon a large scale: the plantations are great businesses, scientifically operated. The number of trees on a good estate is likely to run up into millions, although no other single grower rivals Colonel Schmidt’s production of eleven or twelve thousand tons of coffee.
Visiting a fine fazenda one is aware of seeing the inside of a commercial undertaking of striking magnitude, where activity is regularized, the whole life of the fazendeiro and the colonos subordinated to the supreme interest—at least during the rush season of the colheita. Looking from the windows of the fazendeiro's residence, which is generally upon a little eminence, one sees an ocean of dark green shrubs, planted in perfectly even lines, stretching away in unbroken symmetry as far as the eye can see.
The Sao Paulo land chosen for coffee very often lies in long gentle slopes, its deep purple-carmine tint in sharp contrast to the glossy emerald coffee leaves, and down and up over the undulations run the rows, often extending for eight or ten kilometers. The storehouses, pulping machinery, and great cement drying grounds where the coffee is laid in the sun, are frequently in the hollow where the indispensable river runs; rows of neat little houses of labourers, the Italian colonos who plant, cultivate and gather the coffee, stand within sight. In the background is the area of wild woodland, for “no fazenda can prosper unless it has a certain amount of matto,” say the Brazilians.
In the flowering season a coffee estate is a lovely sight, the sturdy shrubs strewn so thickly with waxy white blossoms that it seems as if snow had fallen on them; the air is clean, cool and sunny, and bees hum over the sweet-scented flowers. The trees are larger than those seen in Central America, are unshaded, and generally three or four roots stand together to make the bush. The ground beneath the shrub is kept carefully weeded.
When the round berries turn red harvesting begins. Men, women and children turn out, trained to strip the berries from the slender little branches without injuring the tree; the whole fazenda is in a bustle, the water-channels are racing with scarlet berries carried along in the stream, and the machinery house is noisy. When the berries are pulped and the twin beans freed and cleaned, the business of packing begins; day by day wagon loads of sacks leave the fazenda for Sao Paulo city, consigned to Santos, and thence to some country overseas.
Brazilians appear to love fazenda life; the wife of a coffee fazendeiro will often take as
keen and business-like an interest in the work as her husband does, discusses theories of planting with spirit, and will show you all the details of the new imported machinery. There is a true hospitality and geniality permeating the fazenda in Brazil; very large sums are often made, and while quantities of coffee money have been royally wasted on extravagances, there is a class of strong business men in plantation work who put profits into improvements, follow new ideas, and build up their estates from year to year in an admirable manner.
It is in Sāo Paulo, and especially about Riberao Preto, Campinas, Sao Simao, S. Carlos, Dous Corregos, Botacatu,—all along the lines of the fans of railroad—that the great coffee estates are found. The original Coffea Arabica has some naturalized children in Brazil of great merit and hardihood; the Nacional or Commun, the delicate Bourbon, yellow Botacatu, the big aromatic Maragogype, all have their defenders. From these plantations come the hundreds of thousands of tons of coffee that have made Brazil the premier coffee country of the world, and brought her to this eminence in a remarkably short space of time. The development of coffee culture in Brazil, and the simultaneous development of public taste for its essence, is one of the great industrial stories of the nineteenth century.
The interior of Rio State, with its endless series of little round hills crowned with coffee shrubs, is an assiduous producer; farther inland Minas Geraes substituted cotton with coffee when the United States began to sweep world markets with her product, but is now going back to cotton here and there as the demand of her own factories brings unheard-of prices for native fibres; she is however a regular supplier of coffee, in common with her neighbour Espirito Santo, and the more northerly state of Bahia. North of Bahia commercial production ceases, but, as in the case of cotton, shrubs may be seen all along the Brazilian littoral, up to Maranhao and Para—of an African variety which does not need hilly country.
The world is steadily drinking more coffee. Consumption was only able to take ten million bags in 1885: the estimate for 1922 is 22 million bags. It is this reflection which preserves the fazendeiro from having nightmare whenever he sees a fine colheita promising. Increased sales of coffee seem to be partly the result of greater world demand for non-alcoholic drinks, but have been undoubtedly developed wherever a systematic propaganda has been carried out. Sao Paulo State went deliberately and level-headedly into the advertising and demonstration business; the campaign was first started in Great Britain, by the Sao Paulo Pure Coffee Company, which roasts, packs and sells good grades of beans. Numbers of cafeterias were established in which strong, hot, sweet Brazilian coffee was perfectly served. Later on the plan was carried to other European countries—notably France, Germany and Austria, all good customers of Brazil—to North America and even to Japan.
Recently the Sao Paulo Pure Coffee Company was acquired by the Brazilian Warrant Company, an enterprising house established in Brazil, with branches in Sao Paulo city, Santos, and Rio de Janeiro, and head-quarters in London: a specialty is made by this company of advances against coffee, as well as sugar, cereals and general merchandise, while they are also commission and consignment agents. Exporters of Brazilian coffee are legion, but it is instructive to note how large a proportion of the names listed are Brazilian; coffee is not one of the businesses which the South American leaves to the foreigner.
Coffee accounts for forty per cent of all the Brazilian export. As far as S. Paulo is concerned, coffee represents over ninety-seven per cent of her exports. In 1915 the state’s total exports were worth a little over 465,000 contos, and of this coffee was worth 453,000 contos. In S. Paulo city itself if one is not in business circles the predominance of coffee might escape the visitor but not so in Santos; here, in the coffee port, the apparatus of shipping has largely been constructed with coffee-loading as the aim: special mechanisms serve the ceaseless stream of laden coffee bags that arrive at the lines upon lines of armazens (warehouses) on the dock front. In the stony streets the scent of coffee prevails; at every doorway burly negroes are hauling out sacks of the aromatic bean; the cluster of banks down the main business street, some Brazilian and many branches of foreign houses, all live upon coffee. The dealers, com- mission men, shippers, roasters of coffee represent the commercial existence of the port.
The coffee industry is one which is a satisfaction to contemplate because it is a clean, wholesome business, from first to last; the conditions under which it is carried on are not only ably organized and in a prospering state, but the workers as well as the estate owners and shippers have a chance to make money and lead pleasant lives.
Elliott, L. E. Brazil Today and Tomorrow. The Macmillan Company, 1922.
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