Manabí

Manabí is where Ecuadorian coffee began. On the Pacific coast, around the town of Jipijapa, smallholders have grown coffee since 1860, and the province long supplied both the export trade and Ecuador’s instant-coffee factories. Its coffee land has shrunk dramatically, but in 2024 Manabí still grew more coffee than any other province, almost all of it arabica grown at low altitude.

The short version

• Low-grown arabica, below 800 metres.
• Mild, with moderate acidity.
• Mostly natural-processed for the past 15–20 years.
• 1,150 tonnes in 2024, about a fifth of Ecuador’s coffee.
• Jipijapa, where Ecuador’s coffee started in 1860.
• Organic and Fair Trade coffee from Paján.

What does Manabí coffee taste like?

Mild. Because it grows low, below 800 metres, Manabí coffee has soft flavours and moderate acidity, Perfect Daily Grind Español reports. When coffee boomed in the province, growers washed it; over the past 15 to 20 years most have switched to the natural process, drying whole cherries, says Rubén Alcívar of the Askley Delgado coffee research centre. Varieties include Typica, Caturra, Bourbon, Sarchimor 1669 and others brought from Brazil. A few speciality farms in Manabí now take part in Ecuador’s quality competitions, USDA noted in 2022.

How much coffee does Manabí grow?

The official survey and industry estimates are far apart:

Measure	Figure	Source
Area planted, 2024	3,426 ha	INEC
Area harvested, 2024	3,050 ha	INEC
Production, 2024	1,150 t (about 21% of Ecuador’s, by our calculation)	INEC
Area planted, 2023	6,825 ha	INEC, via Primicias
Production, 2023	1,708 t	INEC, via Primicias
Area	About 30,000 ha	Industry estimate, via Perfect Daily Grind
Production	50,000–55,000 quintales a year	Industry estimate, via Perfect Daily Grind
Growers	28,000–30,000	Industry estimate, via Perfect Daily Grind

INEC’s figures fell sharply between 2023 and 2024; the industry figures are estimates without a coffee census. Either way, Manabí was Ecuador’s largest coffee province in 2024, just ahead of the Amazonian robusta province of Sucumbíos. Manabí produces 67% of the coffee grown on Ecuador’s coast, and over 90% of its coffee land is arabica, USDA’s attaché in Quito reported in 2022.

From boom to collapse

Ecuador’s coffee area fell from 347,000 hectares in the early 1980s to about 60,000 in 2022, much of the loss in the traditional coffee country of Jipijapa and Manabí that once supplied the soluble-coffee industry, USDA says. The province’s coffee still moves the old way: from growers to traders in Jipijapa, then to Guayaquil, where large companies buy it for export, Perfect Daily Grind reports. Alcívar says growers need state extension services and credit at fair rates, and sees high potential in the province’s climate and soils.

A short history

• 1860: coffee is introduced in the Jipijapa area, Wikipedia records.
• 1903: a fall in coffee growing; two years later it recovers and exports to Europe leave from the port of Manta.
• Early 1980s: Ecuador has about 347,000 hectares of coffee.
• 2022: about 60,000 hectares nationally, USDA says.
• 2024: Manabí grows 1,150 tonnes, the most of any province.

Manabí and other Ecuadorian origins

• Coffee in Ecuador: the whole country, its arabica, robusta and soluble industry.
• Loja: Ecuador’s high-grown speciality arabica.
• Coffee in Colombia: the neighbour to the north.