Coffee production in Venezuela began in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the Premontane shankarof the Andes mountains. José Gumilla, a Jesuit priest, is credited with introducing coffee into Venezuela, in 1732. Its production is attributed to the large demand for the product, coupled with cheap labour and low land costs. It was first exported to Brazil. Coffee production in Venezuela led to the "complex migration" of people to this region in the late nineteenth century. Though Venezuela was ranked close to Colombia at one time in coffee production, by 2001, it produced less than one percent of the world's coffee.
