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An Article From Ipoh Echo - Kopisan
An account of the rise and fall of coffee plantations in the Kinta district. The fertile soil in Kinta coupled with steadily rising coffee prices in the early part of the 1890s, prompted interest from tin miners and smallholders alike. By the mid-1890s Kinta was extensively planted with coffee. However, most planters had started too late to cash in on the coffee boom. When the price of coffee peaked in 1896, the majority of their trees were still immature. By July that year coffee price had fallen from $42 to $34 per picul and continued its downward spiral after. Severely affected by the plunge in coffee prices as well as a devastating caterpillar infestation, smallholders abandoned their coffee plantations while some of the bigger planters converted their estates into rubber plantations. Most of the abandoned coffee estates were later converted into mining land when the price of tin rebounded at the end of the 19th century.