The Report of the Philippine Commission to the Secretary of War 1907* speaks of the tempests that roiled in a pot of Benguet coffee

Coffee Culture in Benguet

The Benguet coffee is as good as the aromatic brew offered for sale at exhorbitant prices in Madrid and Manila coffee houses ... but there is little even raised, let alone put on the markets of the world.

It is indeed a rare coffee for both flavor and cleanliness. There is no blight that has ever attacked the coffee of Benguet. The altitude, temperature and humidity of the air all combine to make this province peculiarly adapted to the successful growth of coffee; still in 1901, there were only 697 cavans raised in the province and last year, 1902, but 852. New coffee plantations are being planted and in a few years the real Benguet coffee will be on the market.

Coffee was first introduced into this province by the Spaniards in 1873 by the military governor, Manuel Scheidnagel y Sera, who planted in the vicinity of Galiano, forming a government garden for the experiment. But while the plants thrived therein, hed did not achieve the success anticipated, owing to the low altitude and heavy rains, which affected the flavor of the coffee planted, the situation being favorable for a Rio than for the Java or Arabica, with which this progressive governor was experimenting. However, the plants grew luxuriantly, and in 1877, his successor Governor Enrique Oraa y Bravo, transplanted to the plateau at an altitude of 4000 to 5000 feet, and distributed seeds among the people of the barrios of the province.

The native Igorots neither favored nor opposed at this time the introduction of this product; but in 1881 the plants having come to the bearing stage, Governor Villena endeavored to force the cultivation and enlargement of coffee plantations by ordering all natives of the province to plant, grow and work coffee. This created an opposition that in Daklan extended so far that the Igorots there, acting under the advice of their old men, attempted to destroy the plantation by pulling out young plants; but to pull out the coffee plant and throw it on the ground does not necessarily kill it, and the coffee resprouted. After this the natives went so far as to pour boiling water on the plants to kill them and did succeed in Daklan in killing out the coffee culture.

In Kabayan, the natives were under the domination of a young Igorot chief named Commissing. The young chieftain had secured his influence and power not merely through his wealth, which consisted of herds of cattle and horses and rice sementeras, but also because of his exceptional valor in personally defending his people against the busoles or headhunters of the north. He bears to this day the scars of many hard-fought battles. The young chief, after many trips to the capital and much observation and study of the new product that was being forced upon his people, became thoroughly satisfied that it would be very valuable to them; he therefore took it upon himself the duty of introducing coffee into Kabayan.

Under his leadership it was planted, cultivated, and grown, and no opposition to its culture was permitted for an instance. In four years, they began gathering crops. Commissing took charge of the sale of their crops, and discovered that the coffee was constantly increasing year by year in value per cavan. He himself went tot he coast to learn its worth -- a long trip in those days for a mountain Igorot. They gradually enlarged their coffee fields, and last year five-eighths of the coffee was grown in Kabayan.

Meantime the Igorots of Daklan who had destroyed their first plants discovered that their neighbors in Kabayan were exceedingly prosperous, that they had much money, and that, comparatively speaking, gave but little labor for the money they received. So, though at a late date, they endeavored to retrieve their error, and have planted large fields and will undoubtedly, in the course of a few years, successfully rival Kabayan in the amount of coffee produced.

The coffee raised in the highlands of Benguet has been bought by the Tabacalera Company, year after year, and the entire crop shipped to Spain, and there disposed of at fabulous prices. None of it went on the market in Manila. But little has even been made use in Manila, and that little only by friends of residents of Benguet of officials of the Tabacalera Company, by favour. It is the aim of the present government to foster this enterprise by every means within its power among the natives of the province; nor do I doubt that in the future the white man with his inherited enterprise will enter the territory for which nature had done so much, and make it the coffee productive province of the archipelago.

*Quoted in Bagamaspad and Hamada-Pawid's A People's History of Benguet (1985), which goes on to say that:

Informants in the municipalities of Kabayan, Bokod, Atok and Mankayan remember trading "sacks" of coffee beans and describe how mountain and hill sides fragrantly bloomed each year. A virulent blight in 1916 all but wiped out the Benguet coffee industry. Remaining trees of the period were those immediately adjoining homes and which benefitted from the kitchen washings and trash burning thus saving them from the "coffee rust" of 1916.

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