Veral Café

It was first grown by native indians at Ahuachapán from stock brought in from Guatemala.  It was not, however, until 1840 that coffee cultivation was begun  seriously through the efforts of Antonio J. Coelho.  It took 20 years for the exports of coffee to reach 1% of the value of national exports, but by 1880 the proportion of coffee to other exports had reached 80%, and in 1924, 93% - making the country one of the few exporting almost exclusively a single commodity.    

Following the civil war of the 1980s and a flooding of the coffee market with cheap Robusta coffees from around the world that resulted in steeply lower prices, by 2002 coffee exports only accounted for 3.5% of El Salvador’s GDP.

Today, El Salvador produces only Arabica coffee, exporting just 84,000 tonnes (1 tonne = 1,000kg) - tiny when compared to the massive 630,000 tonnes Colombia exports.

Coffee is cultivated in all the Salvadorean districts with an altitude of from 500m to 1650m, the total area under coffee being about 180,000 hectares (1 hectare = 2.471 acres).  Nearly all coffee (90%) in El Salvador is shade-grown, with over 80% of the country’s forests associated with shade coffee plantations.

The coffee industry is mostly owned by Salvadorean nationals who have given their best thought and efforts to its sustainable development.  Coffee is picked almost entirely by hand on higher-altitude farms and by machinery on some remaining lower-altitude farms.

The most productive and highest quality plantations are found in the departments of Santa Ana, Sonsonate, La Paz, San Salvador, San Vicente, San Miguel, Santa Tecla, and Ahuachapán.


Sources: International Coffee Organization, and the Coffee Growers Association of El Salvador (Asociación Cafetalera de El Salvador  - ACES)