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September

<p>The United States Department of Agriculture tracks coffee production, trade, and consumption across 94 countries going back to 1960. Each country plays a different structural role in the global coffee supply chain, falling into one of three trade profiles: <strong>Pure Producer</strong>, <strong>Pure Consumer</strong>, or <strong>Trade Hub</strong>.</p><p>Use the USDA coffee data to classify each country into one of these profiles using four metrics:</p><ul><li><p><strong>Production Self-Sufficiency Ratio:</strong> The share of supply grown domestically (PSR = Production / Total Supply).</p></li><li><p><strong>Import Dependency Ratio:</strong> The share of supply coming from imports (IDR = Imports / Total Supply).</p></li><li><p><strong>Export Intensity Ratio:</strong> The share of distributed coffee that leaves the country (EIR = Exports / Total Distribution).</p></li><li><p><strong>Domestic Consumption Share:</strong> The share of distributed coffee consumed domestically (DCS = Domestic Consumption / Total Distribution).</p></li></ul><p>Since coffee production is volatile due to weather and harvest cycles, focus on the <strong>last ten years</strong> (2017-2026) and classify based on 10-year averages to capture each country’s structural role rather than a single good or bad year.</p><p>Design and apply your own threshold rules for "high" and "low" (e.g., quartiles, fixed cutoffs, clustering), following the profile definitions below. Document your choice and visualize the classification results appropriately.&nbsp;</p><ul><li><p><strong>Pure Producer:</strong> Mainly grow their own coffee with little to no imports (high PSR / low IDR) and mainly export it with comparatively little domestic consumption (high EIR / low DCS).</p></li><li><p><strong>Pure Consumer:</strong> Cannot grow coffee (or grow negligible amounts), so they mainly import coffee (high IDR / low PSR) and mainly consume the imported coffee domestically rather than re-exporting it (high DCS / low EIR).</p></li><li><p><strong>Trade Hub:</strong> Have relatively high imports and exports compared to their total supply and distribution (high IDR and high EIR). They may or may not grow coffee itself but it is mainly defined by the sheer volume of coffee passing through the country.</p></li></ul><p><strong><em>Note:</em></strong> Not every country will fit a profile, there are countries that fall in between.</p>
Prepare the Coffee Trade Summary

This block cleans and reshapes the raw USDA coffee data into a country-level summary for the last 10 years. It calculates the key trade metrics used for classification, so each country can later be compared as a Pure Producer, Pure Consumer, Trade Hub, or somewhere in between.

Load the USDA Coffee Dataset

This step imports the raw coffee trade dataset into KNIME. It is the starting point for all later work, providing the country-level records that will be cleaned, summarized, and used to classify each country’s trade profile.

Visualize the Country Trade Profiles

This component turns the prepared table into interactive charts and views so you can explore how countries compare on the coffee trade metrics. In other words, it helps you see the patterns behind the classification results and spot countries that behave like Pure Producers, Pure Consumers, Trade Hubs, or fall between these groups.

GLOBAL COFFEE TRADE & COUNTRY PROFILES                    

KNIME Monthly Challenge - September 2026

This workflow explores global coffee trade patterns using USDA data from 2017–2026. Four trade indicators PSR, IDR, EIR, and DCS are used to classify countries into Pure Producer, Pure Consumer, Trade Hub, or Intermediate profiles, followed by interactive visual analysis of their global positioning and distribution.

Data Prep
CSV Reader
Data Viz

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