An unusually long dry spell this year led to a surplus of some two million mangoes in the Philippines, causing prices to collapse in certain parts of the country and revealing how the farming infrastructure is woefully ill-prepared for the turmoils stirred up by a rapidly changing, unpredictable climate.

It was a bumper harvest that had consumers snapping up baskets-full of the fruit in state-organised "mango festivals", but burying farmers deeper in debt.