Looking through google showed that coffee rust affected other coffee producing regions such as Java and Brazil, but not the Philippines. This supposedly lead to the Philippines being the sole producer of coffee, and allowed for the financing and development of various cathedrals, particulary in Lipa City which was the main center of coffee production. How true was this?
/u/Glenssuos
Thats .... weird. Because as far as I know, coffee production in the Philippines underwent serious decline in the late 19th century. To quote an early 20th century study of the Philippines, The Philippines Islands by John Foreman:
Coffee-planting was commenced in the Colony early in the prc?eut century. A few of the original plants still bear fruit each year. Up to 1889 plantation owners in the province of Batangas assured me that the trees possessed by their grandfathers were still flourishing, whilst it is well known that in many coffee-producing colonies the tree bears profit- ably only up to the 2oth year, and at the 30th year it is quite exhausted. Unless something be done to revive this branch of agriciilture it seems as if coffee would soon cease to be an article of export from these islands. In the year 1891 the crops in Luzon began to fall off very considerably, in a small measure due to the trees having lost their vigour, but chiefly owing to the ravages of a worm in the stems. In 1892-93 the best and oldest-established plantations were almost annihilated. Nothing could be done to stop the scourge, and several of the wealthiest coffee-owners, personally known to me, ploughed up their land and started sugar-cane growing in place of coffee.
In 1883 nearly 7,500 tons of coffee were shipped, whilst in 1896 the total export did uot reach 90 tons.
The best Philippine Coffee comes from the Provinces of Batangas, La Laguna and Cavite (Luzon Island), and includes a large proportion of caracolillo, which is the nearest shape to the Mocha bean and the most esteemed. The Batangas coffee centre is Lipa.
The most inferior Philippine coffee is produced in Mindanao Island, and is sent up to Manila containing a quantity of rotten beans. It consequently always fetches a lower price than Manila (Luzon) coffee, which is highly prized in the market.
Thus, I find it amazing to hear your claim above.
Conveniently, there is a Masters Thesis from the University of Adelaide in 2003, by Bel S. Castro, titled Demythologising the History of Coffee in Lipa, Batangas in the 19th Century. From a quick read, there seems to be quite a few myths, but the thesis speaks of the myth that coffee rust had destroyed coffee production in Lipa, whereas the author suggests that the reality was much more what Forman wrote.