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Growing Coffee in Saudi Jazan Passes Down from Generation to Generation

In a tradition that percolates through generations, Malki harvests the beans with his son Ahmed, 42, and his grandson Mansour, 11 Fayez Nureldine AFP
In a tradition that percolates through generations, Malki harvests the beans with his son Ahmed, 42, and his grandson Mansour, 11 Fayez Nureldine AFP
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Growing Coffee in Saudi Jazan Passes Down from Generation to Generation

In a tradition that percolates through generations, Malki harvests the beans with his son Ahmed, 42, and his grandson Mansour, 11 Fayez Nureldine AFP
In a tradition that percolates through generations, Malki harvests the beans with his son Ahmed, 42, and his grandson Mansour, 11 Fayez Nureldine AFP

For Farah al-Malki, growing coffee plants in Saudi Arabia's southwestern region of Jazan is more than just a profession. It is a family tradition passed down from generation to generation.

The 90-year-old man has a long history with coffee, which spread from Ethiopia to Yemen and then to the rest of the Middle East around the 15th century.

"My father inherited it from his grandfathers, and I took over and passed it down to my sons and then on to my grandchildren," Malki told AFP, as he watched his male relatives prune trees.

Jazan is known for its red Khawlani coffee beans, often blended with cardamom and saffron to give a yellowish hue of coffee -- locally known as ghawa -- and a taste markedly different from the bitter black liquid drunk elsewhere in the Middle East and in the West.

It remains an integral part of Saudi culture, so much so that the government has designated 2022 as "The Year of Saudi Coffee".

Served with dates in homes and royal palaces across the kingdom, ghawa is considered a symbol of hospitality and generosity.

Donning the traditional dress of coffee farmers, a dark "chemise" shirt and ankle-length skirt known as a "wizrah", along with a belt holding a dagger, Malki is still tending to the fields despite his age.

With the kingdom's desire to diversify its economy away from oil, the government last month began a campaign to promote its coffee.

It instructed all restaurants and cafes to use the term "Saudi coffee" instead of Arabic coffee.

Saudi Aramco, the largely state-owned oil company, announced plans to establish a coffee center in Jazan using "advanced irrigation techniques to improve agricultural capacity".

By the end of 2021, the kingdom had 400,000 coffee trees in 600 farms across the country, producing about 800 tonnes of coffee a year. That is a fraction of what Ethiopia produces but, according to domestic reports, Saudi Arabia plans to plant 1.2 million Khawlani trees by 2025.

Malki has nine sons, all of whom take part in the coffee industry, ranging from agriculture and packaging to transportation and marketing.

On the field every day is his 42-year-old son, Ahmed, who like his father is dressed in traditional farmer's clothing, complete with a headdress made of flowers.

He said he has an intimate knowledge of Khawlani coffee beans, explaining: "All farms are organic and free of chemicals."

They produce about 2.5 tonnes of coffee beans a year, selling for between $27-$40 a kilogram ($12-$18 a pound).

Historian Yahya al-Malki, who is not related to the farm family, told AFP that the "secret" to the Khawlani beans lies in their cultivation in the Jazan region, where it is warm, humid and rainy.

Saudi Arabia has sought to include its cultivation of Khawlani coffee on the list of "intangible cultural heritage of humanity" maintained by the United Nations cultural agency UNESCO.

This, Ahmed said, would be a dream come true.

"It will help in supporting farmers and preserving coffee trees as well as attracting foreign investors to the region," he told AFP.

"I hope to pass this on to my sons and their sons, and pray it be a source of livelihood for them."

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Researchers Document Huge Drop in African Elephants in a Half Century

Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo
Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo
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Researchers Document Huge Drop in African Elephants in a Half Century

Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo
Elephants walk at the Amboseli National Park in Kajiado County, Kenya, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi/File Photo

African elephants are Earth's largest land animals, remarkable mammals that are very intelligent and highly social. They also are in peril. Fresh evidence of this comes in a study that documents alarming population declines at numerous sites across the continent over about a half century.

Researchers unveiled on Monday what they called the most comprehensive assessment of the status of the two African elephant species - the savanna elephant and forest elephant - using data on population surveys conducted at 475 sites in 37 countries from 1964 through 2016.

The savanna elephant populations fell by about 70% on average at the surveyed sites and the forest elephant populations dropped by about 90% on average at the surveyed sites, with poaching and habitat loss the main drivers. All told, there was a 77% population decrease on average at the various surveyed sites, spanning both species, Reuters reported.

Elephants vanished at some sites while their populations increased in other places thanks to conservation efforts.

"A lot of the lost populations won't come back, and many low-density populations face continued pressures. We likely will lose more populations going forward," said George Wittemyer, a Colorado State University professor of wildlife conservation and chair of the scientific board of the conservation group Save the Elephants, who helped lead the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Poaching typically involves people killing elephants for their tusks, which are sold illegally on an international black market driven mostly by ivory demand in China and other parts of Asia. Agricultural expansion is the top factor in habitat loss.

The forest elephant population is estimated to be about a third that of savanna elephants. Poaching has affected forest elephants disproportionately and has ravaged populations of both species in northern and eastern Africa.

"We have lost a number of elephant populations across many countries, but the northern Sahel region of Africa - for example in Mali, Chad and Nigeria - has been particularly hard hit. High pressure and limited protection have culminated in populations being extirpated," Wittemyer said.

But in southern Africa, elephant populations rose at 42% of the surveyed sites.

"We have seen real success in a number of places across Africa, but particularly in southern Africa, with strong growth in populations in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia. For populations showing positive trends, we have had active stewardship and management by the governments or outside groups that have taken on a management role," Wittemyer said.

The study did not track a continent-wide population tally because the various surveys employed different methodologies over different time frames to estimate local elephant population density, making a unified head count impossible. Instead, it assessed population trends at each of the surveyed sites.

A population estimate by conservationists conducted separately from this study put the two species combined at between 415,000 and 540,000 elephants as of 2016, the last year of the study period. It remains the most recent comprehensive continent-wide estimate.

"The loss of large mammals is a significant ecological issue for Africa and the planet," said conservation ecologist and study co-author Dave Balfour, a research associate in the Centre for African Conservation Ecology at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa.

The world's third extant elephant species, the slightly smaller Asian elephant, faces its own population crisis, with similar factors at play as in Africa.

Of African elephants, Wittemyer said, "While the trends are not good, it is important to recognize the successes we have had and continue to have. Learning how and where we can be successful in conserving elephants is as important as recognizing the severity of the decline they have experienced."

Wittemyer added of these elephants: "Not only one of the most sentient and intelligent species we share the planet with, but also an incredibly important part of ecosystems in Africa that structures the balance between forest and grasslands, serves as a critical disperser of seeds, and is a species on which a multitude of other species depend on for survival."