Coffee grows in a band around the equator, roughly between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn — about 25°N to 30°S.
Why that band
Coffee needs no frost, moderate and reliable rainfall, and a temperature range of roughly 15 to 24 °C for arabica.
Outside the tropics, winters kill the plant. Inside them, altitude provides the cool temperatures arabica prefers.
The altitude trade-off
Near the equator, coffee grows high — 1,500 to 2,200 m — because it needs the altitude for cool temperatures.
Further from the equator, in Brazil or Hawaii, it grows lower, because latitude already provides the cool.
That is why a 1,000 m Brazilian and a 1,000 m Ethiopian are not comparable.
The main producers
Brazil — around a third of world production. Vietnam — second, overwhelmingly robusta. Colombia, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Honduras, India, Uganda, Mexico, Peru follow.
The outliers
Hawaii at 19°N and Yemen at the northern edge. Australia and the far south of Brazil at the southern.
The pressure
Warming is pushing the viable range upward in altitude and outward in latitude. High land is finite, which is the structural problem facing arabica this century.
Robusta tolerates heat far better, which is one reason its share of world production keeps rising.
Last reviewed 8 August 2026