23Haiti
346,000 bagsIn-depth country profile: production, varieties, classification, history, current situation and points that remain uncertain. Region: Caribbean.
Haiti occupies the western part of the island of Hispaniola, shared with the Dominican Republic. Its coffee, once nicknamed “the black pearl,” counted among the most renowned in the world. Introduced by the Jesuits in 1726, it quickly became a traditional crop, woven into daily life.
Today it is a fragile sector. Precariousness, climate risks (cyclones, the 2010 earthquake) and aging plantations weigh heavily; less than 20% of production is exported, and the areas shrink year after year. The agronomic potential, for its part, remains real, and the coffee-growing regions are among the few areas of the country still wooded.
- Botanical species
- Arabica
- Altitude
- 300 to 2,000 m
- Shade
- Forest and fruit trees
- Harvest
- Manual only
- Processing
- Dry process (90%) and wet process (10%)
- Drying
- On cement drying floors
- Hulling
- Sometimes with a pestle (flattened beans, known as “BB”)
- Harvest period
- August to March
- Packaging
- 60-kg bag
Altitude (washed coffees only)
| Description | Altitude |
| Standard / Good Washed | 700 to 1,000 m |
| High Grown (HG) | 1,000 to 1,500 m |
| Strictly High Grown (SHG) | > 1,500 m |
Bean size
| Grade | Criteria |
| Haiti XX | 15% min screen 17+; 60% min screens 16-17; 25% max < 16 |
| Haiti XXG | 20% min screen 18; 60% min screen 17; 20% max screens 15-16 |
| Haiti XXX | 60% min screens 18+; 5% max < screen 17 |
| Haiti XXXXX | 60% min screens 19+; 5% max < screen 18 |
Taste (4 ratings)
| Term | Quality |
| Extra Supérieur / Extra Fancy | No defects, exceptional organoleptic qualities |
| Supérieur / Fancy | No defects, good organoleptic qualities |
| Choix / Choice | A few defects, “merchantable” cup |
| Ordinaire / Ordinary | Minimum acceptable |
A grading system by number of defects (per 300 g) also exists, but it is very little used today.
History
Two dates coexist, and no source consulted settles the matter. Ukers places the introduction in Haiti and Saint-Domingue in 1715, before hardier plants came later from Martinique. The profile, for its part, gives 1726 and attributes it to the Jesuits.
De Clieu tells the sequel himself. Two years after his first harvest of 1726, a storm and a flood destroyed the cacao trees. It was this destruction that made it possible to send plants to Saint-Domingue and Guadeloupe.
Why does the loss of the cacao trees open the way for the coffee plant? The account does not say.
Ukers, All About Coffee (1922), ch. II, p. 5-10; Country Profiles, Marco De Sousa Rosa, 2026Saint-Domingue becomes the world's leading origin. In 1789, the French colony exported more coffee than the rest of the world combined, on the labor of hundreds of thousands of enslaved people; the coffee plantations, smaller and higher than the sugar estates, had covered the mornes. The revolt of 1791 caused production to collapse and shifted the center of gravity to Cuba, Jamaica and then Brazil. Haiti was still exporting 61,970,694 pounds in 1920, not counting 6,322,167 pounds of triage.
Ukers 1922; Ukers 1922, ch. XXII, p. 289-291 (exports of the producing countries), p. 290; LC ch. 9; professional training document, L'Histoire du caféToday
The volume at the head of the profile, 346,000 bags, is that of the profile. The orchard is 90% Typica and Caturra, between 300 and 2,000 meters, with exclusively manual harvesting, 90% by the dry process and 10% by the wet process. Less than 20% of production is exported, and the areas shrink year after year.
Country Profiles, Marco De Sousa Rosa, 2026Haitian coffee, once nicknamed “the black pearl,” is today a fragile sector: precariousness, cyclones, the 2010 earthquake, aging plantations. The agronomic potential remains real, and the coffee-growing regions are among the few areas of the country still wooded, which makes the coffee plant here a forestry issue as much as an economic one.
Country Profiles, Marco De Sousa Rosa, 2026Gray areas
- The introduction dates diverge: 1715 according to Ukers, 1726 and the Jesuits according to the profile. No source consulted settles it.
- The figure of 40,000 tonnes a year attributed to Saint-Domingue in 1780 by a training document was not cross-checked against a primary source.
- No recent Haitian production volume could be sourced.
- The quantified effect of the 2010 earthquake on coffee growing is not documented by any source in the corpus.