Unfortunately, for the vanilla farmers of Madagascar this isn’t a ‘fake news’ headline. Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported earlier this year that in Madagascar, the world’s primary supplier of pods, vanilla has aroused dangerous passions.
Crop thefts have been reported in most of the key growing regions and there have been dozens of murders. Some communities have called for protection from armed police, while others have taken matters into their own hands (in one village the thieves were rounded up and hacked to death).
The vanilla violence is, according to one local conservationist, a product of poorly regulated global markets, corrupt local politicians and a flood of cash from illegal rosewood trades to China being laundered through the vanilla industry which, because of higher prices due to demand, is leading to deforestation. Read the full story here.
Why higher demand? Because less vanilla is available – Madagascar was struck by Cyclone Enawo in March 2017, the third-biggest cyclone on record, which hit a country already grappling with years of drought. Two of the largest vanilla-producing regions in Madagascar were directly impacted and most of the crop destroyed.
This 2016 photo shows armed guards with vanilla pods near Sambava, Madagascar – that year vanilla prices had almost quadrupled while it was generally accepted that the quality of the crop had declined.
According to Bill Laws in his 2011 book Fifty Plants that Changed the Course of History, by the early 1800s the vanilla orchid had been taken from its natural homeland of Mexico to Mauritius and from there to Indonesia, Réunion Island, Tahiti and Madagascar – the vanilla orchid can grow only a few degrees either side of the Equator and only in Mexico does it have natural pollinators.
It wasn’t until 1841 that Edmond Albius, a 12-year-old slave on Réunion in the Indian Ocean, worked out how to hand-pollinate vanilla blooms using a stick and a flip of the thumb – and vanilla plantations sprang up across the globe.
Vanilla is the second most expensive spice in the world (after saffron) because its production is so labour-intensive. The orchid grows as a clinging vine, up to 100m long.
Most of the world’s crop (75%) comes from the islands of Réunion (formerly Île Bourbon) and Madagascar and is known as Bourbon vanilla, with most of the remaining 25% from Mexico and Tahiti. Heilala Vanilla is a successful Tauranga company that grows its raw product in Tonga.
Less than 1% of vanilla flavouring in our food comes from the vanilla orchid, the rest is synthetic flavour. Read a National Geographic article about vanilla production. Although it’s widely believed that vanilla is the only edible orchid, you might remember this post from last year about salep, used in food and drinks in places like Turkey and Iran, and made from orchid tubers.
Meanwhile, the April 2018 edition of Orchids, the American Orchid Society journal, reports that a new species of vanilla orchid and has been discovered in southeastern Costa Rica. Vanilla karen-christianae was found in an area along the Pan-American Highway where it crosses into Panama.
“The genus includes just over 100 species in its broad distribution and about a dozen have been reported from Costa Rica … the plants were found growing on trees along a small creek and main highway in an area under high pressure because of agricultural and developmental activities, and has no protected or conserved forests nearby.”
The plant has been named to honour Karen Christiana Figueres Olsen, an internationally recognised Costa Rican leader on climate change.
Tauranga Orchid Society 