vanilla
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Coming soon, from the 705 farmers of the Peace Kawomera Cooperative, beautiful organic vanilla.
Today we visited four of Peace Kawomera’s three-dozen vanilla farmers, and developed a strategic plan to prepare and export the Cooperative’s first vanilla harvest. Ten years ago vanilla was the only thing going for some of these farmers. Coffee prices had plummeted, and vanilla prices jumped following the destruction of Madagascar’s crop in 2000-2001. But four years ago, vanilla prices dropped, and then dropped some more, and they haven’t recovered since. There are a number of reasons, one being that many food companies now use synthetic vanilla, and the other, of course, is that just like coffee, farmers often times receive only a fraction of the price that’s actually paid on the world market. This is where fair trade comes in, and creates an opening for farmers to capture the value of their crops.
We’ll be importing 250 lbs of cured vanilla beans, which should arrive by August ‘08. While the cooperative is still working out the costing for this piece of their business, it looks like the farmers will receive nearly what they made a decade ago—good news indeed, as they look to diversify their business, and build off the gains they’ve made from coffee.
See below for a few photos of Charles Nagimesi, one of the Cooperative’s vanilla farmers, as he pollinates the vanilla orchid flower, one-by-one.
