Coffee and the World Wars

During both World Wars, coffee was classified as a strategic commodity, subject to government rationing, price controls, and military procurement. The postwar International Coffee Agreement, partly motivated by Cold War concerns about communist influence in coffee-producing nations, shaped global coffee politics for nearly 30 years.

During the World Wars, religious organizations and faith-based NGOs played a pivotal role in the distribution and cultural branding of coffee. The Salvation Army and the YMCA operated thousands of field 'huts' and mobile canteens, where coffee was provided to troops as a moral stimulant and a 'sobering' alternative to alcohol, which many religious leaders viewed as a threat to military discipline and spiritual integrity. This branding helped transition coffee from a generic commodity to a symbol of domestic comfort and Christian welfare. Economically, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following World War I removed centuries of Islamic caliphal oversight from traditional coffee trade routes in the Levant and Arabian Peninsula, shifting control to secular colonial mandates. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, 'peace churches' like the Mennonite Central Committee and the Society of Friends (Quakers) integrated coffee into their humanitarian relief programs, establishing early ethical trade models that sought to provide economic stability to impoverished farmers in war-ravaged regions of the Global South.

The World Wars transformed coffee economics. Wartime demand and government purchasing stabilized coffee prices for producing nations. The postwar International Coffee Agreement established a regulated market with export quotas and price bands that provided relative stability for coffee-producing nations from 1962 to 1989.

• •During World War II, the U.S. military was the world's largest single coffee buyer, supplying millions of soldiers with coffee as both a stimulant and a morale booster.
• •The U.S. government mandated that all coffee supplied to the military be instant, driving rapid innovation in instant coffee technology and establishing instant coffee as a consumer product after the war.
• •During WWII coffee rationing, American civilians were limited to one pound of coffee every five weeks, leading to widespread use of chicory, grain substitutes, and coffee ground reuse.
• •Nescafe, launched by Nestle in 1938, became a global brand during World War II as it was included in millions of military ration kits distributed to American GIs.
• •The International Coffee Agreement of 1962, partly motivated by Cold War fears of communist influence in Latin American coffee nations, governed global coffee trade for nearly 30 years.
• •Coffee was considered so important to troop morale during WWII that General George S. Patton called it 'as important as ammunition.'

• •Chapter 1: The History of Coffee
• •Chapter 12: Coffee Economics

• •Pendergrast, M. Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World. Basic Books. 2019.
• •Topik, S. 'Coffee.' In: The World That Trade Created. Routledge. 2012.
• •Lyons, K.E. The Complete World of Coffee. Lyons Den Publishing. 2024.
• •Talbot, J.M. Grounds for Agreement: The Political Economy of the Coffee Commodity Chain. Rowman and Littlefield. 2004.
• •National Coffee Association. Historical Coffee Consumption Data. 2023.