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I recently purchased vanilla in a grocery store in Luxembourg and could not help wondering about the price: 4 – 6 EUR for a single pod of vanilla. Fascinated by this very expensive and very lonely vanilla pod in a glass vial I started to investigate…
Madagaskar is one of the poorest countries on earth. Only 1 out of 4 km of roads are paved, around 75% of the population were estimated to live below the international poverty line of 1.90 USD in 2019. For 150 years, Madagascar has steadily been exporting Vanilla to the world, until it recently provided over 80% of world market.
Poor subsistence farmers growing the vanilla orchid in a mixed culture (agroforestry) used to earn a few dollars per kg through a very industrious process of hand-pollinating every single flower every single day for 3 months.