COFFEE IN THE PHILIPPINES. 1 



By P. J. WESTER, Horticulturist in Charge of Lamao Experiment Station. 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 



While it cannot be said that the Philippines have ever grown 

 coffee on a scale that made it an important factor in the world's 

 market, yet, before the advent of the coffee blight, coffee grow- 

 ing, from a Philippine point of view, was an industry of consid- 

 erable magnitude and unquestionably of great promise. How- 

 ever, in the Philippines as in other parts of the eastern Tropics, 

 the blight destroyed the coffee industry, and while in the last 

 few years previous to the appearance of the blight there was 

 an average annual export of about 7,000 tons of coffee, valued at 

 1*4,000,000, in 1913 the Philippines produced only 113,031 kilo- 

 grams of Arabian coffee with an average production of 174 kilo- 

 grams per hectare, the coffee imports during the same period 

 amounting to 1,138,781 kilograms, valued at =816,744. The 

 leading coffee-producing provinces of the Archipelago were, 

 during 1913, the Mountain, 42,066 kilograms ; Moro, 31,040 kilo- 

 grams; Nueva Vizcaya, 5,792 kilograms; and Batangas, 5,319 

 kilograms. Varying quantities of coffee, less than 5,000 kilo- 

 grams in any one, were produced in each of the remaining 

 provinces, excepting Agusan, Bataan, Batanes, Ilocos Sur, Leyte, 

 Pampanga, and Surigao, where coffee is not grown. 



From a study of the coffee situation in the Eastern Hemisphere 

 it is evident that Arabian coffee will never again become of im- 

 portance in this part of the world, including of course the Philip- 

 pines. However, it seems that a satisfactory substitute has 

 been discovered in the robusta coffee. This variety, while not 

 immune to the blight, is so resistant to the effects thereof that 



'All statistics, and much of the information that applies specifically 

 to robusta coffee have been adapted from "Robusta and Some Allied Coffee 

 Species" by Dr. C. J. J. Van Hall, of the department of agriculture, 

 Buitenzorg, Java, published in the Agr. Bui. of the F. M. S., Vol. I: No. 

 7, 1913, and from a review of a series of articles on robusta coffee by 

 Dr. E. Wildeman, in the Monthly Bui. of Agr. Intelligence, etc., Vol. 

 IV: No. 4, 1913. 



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