High Quality Coffee from El Salvador
Coffee has been probably El Salvador's most important product. Introduced in the 1850's, Coffee was brought from Middle East and grown in the highlands of El Salvador. The winds of the Pacific Ocean, the volcanic terrain full of nutrients and the great sunlight and rain produce a high quality coffee which has been exported to US and Europe of many years. Bourbon is the coffee variety traditionally grown in El Salvador but now Pacamara has become very popular because of its fruity flavor. Some historians set the period of introduction of coffee cultivation to El Salvador between 1779 and 1796, according to history, the first plants were found on the land of two peasants from Ahuachap«”n. From 1857 the crop was expanded throughout the Salvadoran territory, the route began in Ahuachap«”n and then passed to Santa Ana and Sonsonate, later it was introduced in the west of San Vicente, in the mountains of Berlin and in the Chaparrastique Volcano of San Miguel.
Between the 30s and 40s of the 20th century, coffee growing received strong support, encouraging the planting of new coffee areas through a credit policy favorable to coffee growers. The modernization of coffee cultivation began in the 1950s and stimulated by high prices at the beginning of it, coffee growers began to replace the Arabic variety with bourbon, a better use of fertilizers, to manage the shade of coffee plantations in different ways , to use new pruning systems, to initiate anti-erosive practices and to raise the shrub population to about 2,000 coffee trees per Apple. As a result of the achievements in productivity, in the mid-1970s El Salvador became the fifth world producer and fourth exporter with crops close to 5 million quintals. Currently, 11% of the national territory is covered with forest and 7% consists of coffee plantations and trees with cultivated and mountain shade. For the above, it is important to raise public awareness about the importance of coffee for the country and its consumption. As of 2014, the policy of reactivation of the national coffee industry is initiated, through a gradual process of renovation of the coffee park and other support measures for the coffee grower.