I found the following quote: “Do I like my coffee black? There are other colors?” (And there are other colors depending upon how much milk/crème/water one adds.) Most of the world, there are different varieties not listed here, such as Greek Coffee, but the world drinks coffee!
Here in the United States, the UrbanCoffee.com lists that 64% of American adults daily consume coffee. That’s a lot of people, but where do people get their coffee? Most brew their coffee at home, as this graph from Coffee Brew, but there are numerous places to get a cup of java!
But the real question is not much coffee we drink, but how dependent we are on coffee imports. Hawaii is the only state that grows coffee, with over 6,900 acres producing over almost 12,500 metric tons of coffee beans in 2020-2021. In 2020, the United States imported almost 1.5 million metric tons of coffee.
So, where did all this coffee come from? The top import sources are Brazil, Colombia, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Guatemala, but all coffee producing area ship coffee to the United States. And as this is mostly shipped through the nation’s ports (except for Mexican beans that move through various land crossings), the largest import gateways are New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Charleston, Baltimore. I am doing my best to help New Orleans be number one, but no one really knows where a roaster sourced their coffee!
So, when you have your next cup of coffee, and enjoy that first ship of goodness, remember that your coffee is the end of a global supply chain. I’m off to get my favorite cup of coffee, one that is “As Black as Night, As Strong as Death, as Hot as Hell, and As Sweet As Love.”