How did coffee get into Trinidad?

It all started with the French...

Jardin des Plantes in Paris (Wikipedia)

 The French received their first coffee plant as a gift in 1713 via the Dutch. This was kept at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, where presumably it produced fruit and thereafter many plants. In 1723 a coffee plant was taken to the French colony of Martinique in the West Indies by a French naval officer Gabriel de Clieu. That led to the development of a coffee industry which became the leading cash crop for the island and later spread to all of the French territories in the West Indies (The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers published in 2018 by Penguin Random House, UK).

...encouraged by the Spanish

 In 1783, the Spanish government of Trinidad passed an edict titled “The Cedula of Population” to encourage immigration to Trinidad. Persons of either gender and of the Roman Catholic faith who would swear loyalty to the Spanish Crown were to receive land allotments in sizes depending on their race and heritage. 

Thatched cottages on a cocoa/coffee
estate in Trinidad.
MJ Cazabon, 1813-1888.

 
French planters with their slaves, free persons of colour and mulattos from neighbouring islands of Grenada, Martinique, Guadeloupe and Dominica migrated to Trinidad during the French Revolution. The Spanish also gave many incentives to lure settlers to the island, including exemption from taxes for ten years and land grants in accordance to the terms as prescribed in the Cedula. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedula_of_Population ). It is likely that the French planters brought coffee plants to Trinidad during their settlement on the island from 1783 where they subsequently established sugar, cotton and coffee plantations. 

 The demise of coffee plantations in the French Caribbean islands following the French Revolution and the exodus of the French Catholic planters, likely encouraged the Spanish to initiate coffee production in Venezuela, which was further supported by the free trade edict of Charles III in Madrid in 1778. In 1784, the first coffee plantation was established in Chacao, about 5 km from Caracas in Venezuela by Don Bartholomeo Blandin. 

Promoted by the British...

 In 1797, after the defeat of the Spanish by the British, Trinidad subsequently came under British crown colony administration from 1805. However in 1799, prior to its formal incorporation into the crown, the British government sought to increase agricultural production in the colony, promulgating the order that: “there may be formed on its territory 1,313 sugar, 945 coffee, 304 cocoa, and 158 cotton plantations of 100 squares or 320 English acres each.” (Statistical, Commercial and Political Description of Venezuela, Trinidad, Margarita and Tobago. From the French of D. Lavayasse. Publisher G. & W.B. Whittaker, 1820. London). 

New plant material

Arabica coffee plant

 In 1875-1878, ‘Arabian and Liberian’ coffee plants were introduced by the Government Botanist at the Botanic Garden in St Ann’s, Trinidad. He described the following 6 varieties (mostly Arabica) which were grown and made available to the planters to expand coffee production: Hybrid Moka, Creole, Menuda, Moka, the Narrow Leaf and Liberian (Trinidad Royal Gazette.  28th August, 1878). Plants were subsequently distributed initially, to planters in the Maraval and St Ann’s valleys. 

In the early 1900s, Trinidad still served as a port for transhipment of goods coming from the Orinoco region of Venezuela, facilitated by the large and influential Spanish population of the island. The Collector of Customs for Trinidad (R.H. McCarthy at that time), indicated that in 1901, trade with Venezuela involved mainly goods shipped from Ciudad Bolivar to Port of Spain; including among other things, 128,000 kilos of coffee and 38,000 kilos of cocoa (The Book of Trinidad, pages 77-81. Edited by T.B. Jackson. Muir, Marshall and Company, 1904. Trinidad).

Robusta coffee plant

Very little information is accessible on the introduction of Robusta coffee into Trinidad. Some mention is made in the ‘Fortnightly Review of the Imperial Department of Agriculture for the West Indies Vol. II; No. 29. (1903)’ of luxuriant growth, Congo Coffee (Coffea robusta as it was then called) planted at the Experiment Station, St. Clair in Trinidad. As late as 1927 the chief species grown was Coffea arabica, but since then, Coffea robusta had become the most widely cultivated coffee species although it was only introduced to Trinidad in 1901 according to W.G. Mathewson in his 1951 survey of coffee cultivation in Trinidad (Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture).

Exports in the old days

In the 1920s, coffee exports from Trinidad ranged from about 497,000 lbs to over 818,000 lbs (Coffee in Trinidad accompanied by a description of the coffee on the college farm. J.E. Mills, 1930. ICTA). In 1951, the annual production of coffee in Trinidad was claimed as three million lbs with about two million lbs being exported (A survey of coffee cultivation in Trinidad. W.G. Mathewson, 1951. ICTA). However, it is not known how much of those exported coffee were actually coffee transhipped from the Orinoco region of Venezuela. Sadly, unroasted coffee bean exports from Trinidad had ceased at least a decade or more now, as production was not considered profitable and many coffee estates were converted to other uses or other types of crop production over the past 20 years.

Rising from the ashes…a possibility

The Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture c.1923

From the published dissertations of the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture (ICTA) which was located in St. Augustine, Trinidad there is evidence of several research projects on coffee in Trinidad from the 1930s to the 1950s. Records at the Central Experimental Station, Centeno, Trinidad and the former Caroni Research Station at Waterloo in Trinidad, indicated that there was a resurgence in coffee experimentation during the 1980s-1990s. Regrettably, there is little if any, research or development related to coffee production in Trinidad and Tobago over the past 20 years.

However, there has been an emergence of new, small scale coffee roasters in the country over the past five years or so (micro or nano roasters). The demand for local coffee has also been increasing and local supplies cannot currently sustain such a demand. A plan for the future of coffee in Trinidad has recently been slowly evolving, despite the lack of interest shown by the Ministry responsible for agriculture…stay tuned for further developments!