pricesshottowardtheloftyheightswheretheyyetremain.
Thepreviousyear,whenthe10,000-ariarybillwasthebiggest
tobehad,internationalbuyersscrambledatharvesttimeto
gettheirhandsonalltheycouldfind.Theyrushedtothebig
banksinAntananarivoandbouncedaroundthebranchesof
thenortheast,onlytobeturnedaway.
Lochheadwasoneofthosebuyers.Shecouldn’tfigureout
whatwasgoingonuntilshesawlocalrepsfromMcCormick&
Co.arrive.TheAmericanspicegianthadanticipateda price
spikeandactedfasterthananyoneelse,sherecalls,with-
drawingariarybythecratefulfrombanksinthecapital,then
reinforcing its stash at smaller branches. “No one else could
get any,” Lochhead recalls. “We couldn’t buy vanilla for three
days, until the government printed more money and sent it
up here. It was crazy.”
Whenever the price of vanilla spikes and international
executives are confronted by Madagascar’s infrastructural
precariousness, they ask themselves, Why are we subject-
ing ourselves to this? Wouldn’t it be easier to get our vanilla
from someplace else?
New vanilla cultivation projects have been introduced
nearly everywhere orchids naturally thrive. But vanilla is
stubborn. It likes to grow among other plants, and if you
try to create a huge, easily managed, monocultural planta-
tion, certain fungal diseases tend to spread quickly. “We’ve
started farms in Fiji, in Indonesia, and we have one in Papua
New Guinea,” Lochhead says. Those farms have worked,
to a certain extent. “They just don’t work as well.” In the
Netherlands, teams of horticulturalists embarked in 2012 on
a pilot project to cultivate vanilla in greenhouses. Earlier this
year they ran out of funding and concluded their crop wasn’t
financially sustainable.
Connoisseurs describe vanilla from Indonesia as earthy
and smoky; from Uganda as chocolaty; from Tahiti as fruity
and flowery; from Mexico as hinting of clover and nutmeg.
But the Malagasy stuff tastes like what people expect from
really good vanilla: rich, sweet, creamy. Those subtleties
might help explain, to a fractional extent, why Madagascar
dominates the trade.
A much bigger reason is cheap labor. Since Madagascar
let the free market take over, the country’s share of world
vanilla production has risen to 80% or more, according to
industry experts. The broader price swings are partly respon-
sibleforthatgrowth.Vanillabeansaredelicateandincredi-
blylabor-intensive,andnopartoftheplanting,pollinating,
cultivating,andcuringprocesshasbeenmechanized.Each
vanillabeanwillbetouchedbyhumanhandshundreds of
times—perhaps thousands—before it’s exported.
When the beans are bringing in hundreds of dollars per
kilo, many countries in desirable latitudes can afford to deploy
that much labor. But what about when prices tank? Wages in
the other vanilla-producing countries are 10 to 15 times higher
than in Madagascar, where the legal minimum wage for agri-
cultural workers is 18¢ an hour. In those other places, vanilla
plantations would hemorrhage money during downturns. “No
one will invest in that,” Lochhead says. “How can you com-
pete with Madagascar, where people work for $1 a day?”
It’s a perfect illustration of the globalized economy’sLochhead and Randriamihaja
inspect a farmer’s beans