Coffea Canephora is a coffee species. It is the second most commonly grown species after Arabica, making up roughly 40% of the world's coffee production. Together with Eugenides, it is a parent species of Arabica and one of the most diverse coffee species. In the wild, it is found mostly in evergreen forests and originated in central and western sub-Saharan Africa.
It is characteristic of being able to grow at lower altitudes, even at sea level, and higher temperatures. It also has considerably better resistance to many pests and diseases that have proved problematic when farming arabica, thus reducing the need for pesticides and herbicides.
Canephora is mostly* a cross-pollinating species. This means that the plant needs pollen from another variety to produce fruit. And so, very few Canephora farms are genetically uniform or capable of maintaining stable varieties. This challenge is often tackled by choosing intentional and simultaneously flowering varieties that can produce the desired result. Additionally, not all varieties are compatible, which can limit pairing choices. The requirement for cross-pollination makes the species incredibly diverse, but it is also difficult to track or attribute certain cup characteristics to a specific variety. It also makes it easy for us to generalize these varieties under umbrella terms like "Robusta". Since this occurrence poses a challenge for us regarding language, I recommend two options that do little harm and encourage further research. Option one would be to refer to beans of unknown variety by the name of the species, which in this case is Coffea Canephora. Option number two, which is my personal preference, is to call the variety by the name the producer uses for it. Option number two might only sometimes be scientifically correct, but it does help differentiate between various varieties and respects what I'd call local data. Local data is often based on generational knowledge and familiarity with the environment and plants someone cultivates. This terminology, therefore, remains valid and essential as it acknowledges the expertise and experience of people outside of the scientific community, often governed by privileged nations.
An important factor and differentiation in how I'd like for people to talk about Canephora versus how the industry has spoken about Arabica is the acknowledgement of its history. As much respect as I have for people who write and research for World Coffee Research or the Coffee Quality Institute, for example, we have to admit that these institutions repeatedly fail to consider coffee a colonial product. While I understand it is not a fun fact to communicate, the way we work with a product and talk about it should always be in a context proper to its background.
Canephora has not been discovered, but it has been identified by European powers almost 100 years after Arabica and was first cultivated in the 1870s present-day Democratic Republic Of Congo under the Belgian rule of King Leopold II. He annexed this land, regardless of mass protests over killings and widespread violence carried out by his agents. Millions are said to have been murdered or worked to death during his control of this country, including on coffee plantations. Colonised Congo has become one of the most critical breeding centres for Coffea Canephora. The Kouillou variety, later renamed Connilon, was one of the first cultivated there before it was implemented massively in Brazil. The name Coffea Canephora was first established in 1895 by a French botanist, Louise Pierre. Shortly after, people were sent to the Colonised Congo to acquire seeds that had “economic potential”. From there, these seeds ended up in Brussels, where colonial powers, including the Netherlands, France, Portugal, and England, introduced them to their colonies, including Indonesia, Vietnam, India, and Brazil. Canephora was first sent under the name Robusta to Java, then a Dutch colony which became its biggest producer at a time in history. Credit to the popularity and demand for the species can already be credited to coffee leaf rust, a fungal infection of the plant that caused many problems on coffee plantations in Asia and continues to threaten many livelihoods today. Canephora was the solution.
The history of Canephora, like the history of all coffee, is not a happy one. It is a story of violence, extortion, oppressed people, inhumane conditions, rape, erasing culture, slavery and irreversible wounds of which scars we will never stop seeing. That's what Europe did to coffee before it decided to make it cool, roast it lightly in Scandinavia and find alternative ways of putting its claim on it. But coffee didn't always have this dark context. Contrary to what we are often told, there has been coffee culture before us, and terms like "waves" of coffee are a shallow way of viewing a plant with a long and rich heritage.
Thanks to Bartholomew Jones and Renata Henderson of Cxffeeblack, I've learned a beautiful blessing – "May you lack no coffee nor peace in your home". It is a phrase initially in Afan Oromo shared with friends and family for around 1500 years in indigenous communities in Oromia. Ethiopia, widely known as the birthplace of coffee, has a long and rich history of consuming it too. It was associated with peace and prosperity. With community and love. And to quote Maurice Henderson - "It's beautiful to realize that coffee was a symbol of peace to the indigenous Africans who discovered it. It's equally as horrifying to see that coffee has been antithetical to this for the overwhelming majority of the black and brown folks who have contributed to the 225 billion dollars that the coffee generates annually."
I believe that collectively, although not in my lifetime, we can contribute to coffee again becoming a symbol of love and peace. I don't have a specific idea as to how. You see, I am a coffee roaster, and quite a simple one, too. But I do like putting this idea out there in hopes that smarter and less hopelessly idealistic people might see a way. As far as Canephora goes, it symbolizes hope for me.
