Coffee is one of the major soft commodities traded. Coffee comes from a small evergreen tree of the genus Coffea. The red coloured berries contain coffee seeds. The two most common coffee types are the Coffea arabica, and the "robusta". The arabica variety yields the highest-quality beans and provides the bulk of the world's coffee
Coffee seeds are roasted and are then referred to as normally referred to as beans. It is the unroasted green variety that is traded on exchanges.
Coffee trees grow in more than 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa. Coffee is thought to be native to Ethiopia, where it was known before A.D. 1000.