Large trucks laden with imported goods rumble up Madagascar’s Route Nationale 2 from the coastal city of Toamasina to the highland capital of Antananarivo. They skirt along the densely forested, tropical coast before zig zagging their way up the island’s eastern mountains onto the dry central plateau. Along the way, the drivers stop at a hotely, a sort of restaurant-truck-stop, to rest, eat, and drink. Alongside pork stewed in crushed cassava leaves, native red rice, and freshly made donuts, coffee is a staple at the Malagasy hotely.
At most establishments, the proprietress and her staff process the coffee from seed to cup. They roast the green coffee in a pan over charcoal until nearly burnt, grind it by pounding in a large wooden mortar and pestle, and filter it through a woven tanty kafé, or coffee basket. The truckers take the dark brew in small cups infused with spoons of sugar and long pours of canned condensed milk. Suitably stimulated by their coffee break, they climb back up into their semi cabs and disappear around another of the highway’s sinuous turns.
Coffee has been a commercial commodity and a daily drink on the island of Madagascar since the 1800s, but the last several decades have seen domestic production of coffee disintegrate with exports out of the port of Toamasina drying up. Nowadays, though, new private commercial endeavors like the Madagascar Coffee Company and government research led by FOFIFA (Madagascar’s National Center for Applied Research in Rural Development) are pushing the coffee industry towards a timely revival, buoyed by the island’s unique geography and unparalleled biodiversity. Madagascar, in fact, is home to more distinct species of coffee than anywhere else on the planet.
Production of coffee in Madagascar first took root due to French investment in coffee on the nearby island of Réunion in the 1720s. By the 1820s, the ruling Merina tribe of Madagascar was collaborating with Réunion planters to develop an industry around the highland capital. Plantations in the tropical southeastern coast followed shortly thereafter. By the 1920s, coffee grown along the coast was one of colonial French Madagascar’s most consequential exports alongside rice, raw cowhides, and vanilla (even surpassing vanilla in the 1930s.) Nearly 100% of coffee exports at the time went to France, where the colonial commodity was imported duty free.
But the coffee industry was divided geographically and ethnically. In the highlands, native Malagasy smallholders grew Arabica in the few regions with suitable climate and soil. On the coast, larger French interests maintained vast plantations of Robusta, such as the French-owned Compagnie Marseillaise de Madagascar which possessed over half a million trees in the southeastern Mananjary district during the 1950s. As plantations of this size have collapsed over the decades of Malagasy independence and more recent political and economic instability, the commercial coffee industry has fallen off. In 1990, Madagascar exported over 47 million kilograms of coffee. By 2010, that figure had reduced to just 8 million kilograms—the infrastructure that supported commercial coffee production decayed proportionally.
Ryan Kelley and Jim Hazen have spent the last couple of years co-founding the Madagascar Coffee Company. “Operating in Madagascar is challenging for many reasons,” says Kelley, “The industry is being rebuilt from aggregating from farmers to putting in processing centers like wet mills. There is no dry miller in Madagascar. Typically, a coffee company is going to focus on one or two of those steps, and we have to focus on all of them. The coffee sector needs to be rebuilt starting from pruning and stumping old trees, planting new trees, all the way through building companies along the supply chain.”
The new company just completed its first year of harvest this past season from June through August. They source Robusta from the historical commercial center along the southeastern coast from Mananjary down to Farafangana. Their Arabica, on the other hand, is aggregated from smallholders with anywhere from 15 to 50 trees in geographical batches from the Itasy, Amoron’i Mania, and Haute Matsiatra regions in the plateau.
Kelley and Hazen aim at reintroducing Malagasy coffee to consumers around the world—from Japan to Europe, from the UK to the US. “We’ve developed a light medium roast for the Arabicas that our customers have really gravitated to,“ says Kelley of their first harvest’s offerings “Madagascar tends to be a fairly sweet coffee, and we are getting some nice citrus notes on the lighter roasts. On the Robusta side, we have been doing some natural processed Robustas and then doing some espresso blends. It brings out the acidity, while giving it a chocolate-covered cherry effect from the natural processing.” The country has the potential to produce specialty coffee of excellent character and quality. In 2007, a coffee from Madagascar won the African Taste of Harvest competition hosted by the African Fine Coffees Association (AFCA.)
And Madagascar has more to offer coffee producers. Kelley adds, “Whenever we talk to people in the coffee industry, they’re like ‘Wow, Madagascar is home to so many different varieties of coffee. Almost all of the coffee species are in Madagascar.’ There’s a lot of great work happening at FOFIFA both as a seed bank but also research. We are excited about what we can do in terms of adapting varieties.”
Madagascar’s hidden secret is that it is home to more wild species of coffee than anywhere else on Earth. These varieties, collectively called Mascarocoffea, after the Mascarene Islands east of Madagascar, promise genetic resistance to certain pests, climate change, and even offer a natural alternative to decaf.
Dr. Mbolarinosy Rasoafalimanana Rakotomalala, Scientific Director at FOFIFA, explains, “We have a germplasm bank of all cultivated commodities. So coffee is among our responsibilities–to preserve the coffee germplasm in situ at the station of Kianjavato. It was founded by the Japanese during the time of Jean-Jacques Rakotomalala. He worked with the Japanese and the Institute of Research Development (IRD) in France. They developed improved coffee varieties together while preserving the wild species.”
The late Jean-Jacques Rakotomalala, former Director of Research at FOFIFA, spearheaded research on a variety of wild species, advocating for the preservation of the island’s genetic diversity and the hybridization of wild species with commercial varieties.
Now, Raharimalala Eva Nathalie, PhD, heads the Coffee Program at FOFIFA. According to Raharimalala, there are around 130 known species of coffee. Between 40 and 44 are endemic to mainland Africa. Another 61 are native to Madagascar. Nowhere else on Earth are there so many distinct species of coffee than Madagascar. “How can I explain why Madagascar has the most species?” asks Raharimalala, “It is not just coffee species, it is the biodiversity of Madagascar.” Indeed, the island is home to over half of the world’s chameleon species, six out of eight baobab species, and it is the exclusive residence of lemurs. Raharimalala estimates, though, that 70% of these native coffee species are in danger of extinction. At the research station in Kianjavato, they maintain living specimens of 40 of the 61 endemic coffees.
In this biodiversity, researchers see a gold mine for agricultural resilience. “We want to improve cultivated coffee to have some resistance to rust, for example, among other diseases,” says Rasoafalimanana. One species, called Bara Coffea, which grows in the northwest of Madagascar in an arid region, is particularly resistant to drought and water scarcity.
FOFIFA researchers are also working to create hybrids that will better adapt Arabica to the island’s plateau. “Arabica is cultivated in the highlands, but the adaptability of this variety is not good in Madagascar,” explains Raharimalala, “It is concentrated in the Itasy region which is a volcanic region where the soil is still rich. Also there is a microclimate that is favorable for Arabica. But the production is very low.” Researchers are in the process of testing the viability of a new variety, called Ratelo, crossed from two parents, one a hybrid of Coffea eugenioides and Coffea Canephora and the other Coffea Arabica.
Another potential benefit is that the wild Malagasy coffees contain no caffeine. At the end of the 19th century, French naturalist Léon Humblot sent samples of native flora from the nearby Comoros Islands back to France. In 1901, the French biochemist Gabriel Bertrand showed that one such species, Coffea humblotiana, contained no caffeine. The French IRD rediscovered 100 plants of the species on the island of Mayotte in 2010.
“In Madagascar, we don’t grow wild coffee because when we taste test them, they are very bitter, and the speciation of the coffee in Madagascar does not produce caffeine, or produces a low caffeine content in all 61 species,” adds Raharimalala, “This is why we use the wild coffee in hybridization—to have a species with low caffeine content or no caffeine. As well as to have new tastes and sensory properties.” Hybrids could present a healthier and more natural alternative to low caffeine coffees, and may someday present a naturally occurring addition to the decaf market.
In both cultivated and wild species, Madagascar’s unique geography lends itself to diversity. The same climatic variables that keep Robusta on the east coast and Arabica in small pockets on the plateau have allowed coffee to speciate over millions of years on the island, adapting to regions as diverse as the coastal rainforest and the arid plateau. Unlocking the biological diversity of wild coffee could not only fuel a revival of an export industry on the island, but also lead to more climate resistant coffee farming around the world.
N.C. Stevens is a freelance journalist based in Boston and the creator of DrinkingFolk.com. Read more N.C. Stevens for Sprudge.