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One Island Grows 80% of the World’s Vanilla
- kolbe 8y ago*One island roughly the size of Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois combined.
- ryanworl 8y agoA slightly more up-beat version: A single county in Pennsylvania grows 50% of the mushrooms in the United States. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/this-small-pennsylvania-region-produces-half-the-mushroom-crop-in-the-u-s https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/this-small-pennsylvania-...
- TulliusCicero 8y agoThis is really interesting, thanks for sharing.
- techiferous 8y agoAnd > 90% of America's wild blueberries come from Washington County, Maine.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- toomanybeersies 8y agoAnother interesting geographically focused product is rhubarb and the 9 square mile Rhubarb Triangle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb_Triangle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb_Triangle At one point they grew 90% of the worlds forced rhubarb (a special kind of rhubarb grown indoors).
- twic 8y agoYou and dreen should start a Rhubarb Fact Club: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17118067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17118067
- Grue3 8y agoWeird that rhubarb is native to Russia and yet I've never seen it commercially grown there. My folks had a few plants grown in our ogorod, and made a delicious drink out of it. But now that I live in the city, I don't see any rhubarb jelly or drinks in the supermarkets.
- reificator 8y agoIs that really a problem if you can supply the world's needs with 5 plants? One of the older "life hacks" is to put a teaspoon of vanilla extract in the oven to make the house smell better. Speaking from experience: don't use more than that or you will regret it. I couldn't visit their house for a week.
- CLGrimes 8y agoWhich 5 plants are you referring to?
- reificator 8y ago> Which 5 plants are you referring to? It's a cooking joke, because vanilla is incredibly strong. I said 5 plants because it's the fewest needed to be able to split out 80% without fractions.
- dflock 8y agoProbably: rice, wheat, cassava, potato, banana? You obviously need to eat some other stuff occasionally, but those plants are the staple diet for a large chunk of the world population.
- twothamendment 8y agoIt is old, but potato alone will get you pretty far: https://www.livescience.com/10163-man-eating-potatoes-2-months.html https://www.livescience.com/10163-man-eating-potatoes-2-mont... I'd need some variety just so I didn't go insane.
- bokstavkjeks 8y agoIt's kind of a problem in that any supply problems have pretty massive effects on the price. A cyclone hit Madagascar in 2011 which significantly reduced the year's harvest, sending the prices skyrocketing [0]. Anecdotally, there was a time during 2016/2017 where my local stores couldn't even get vanilla pods. [0] https://moneyweek.com/chart-of-the-week-vanilla-could-soon-be-off-the-menu/ https://moneyweek.com/chart-of-the-week-vanilla-could-soon-b...
- seren 8y agoTo save you a click, that island is Madagascar.
- rch 8y agoGrowing your own vanilla isn't difficult, but it requires more greenhouse space than you might imagine. The plant grows like a vine, and it'll need to reach about 20' with multiple points of ground contact before producing pods. (as explained to me by an orchid enthusiast)
- ianai 8y agoHow long would it take to go from seed to first pod?
- rch 8y agoProbably 3-4 years before meaningful production.
- sov 8y agoAS someone with vanilla, I'm gonna disagree with you a bit here. Growing your own vanilla is very difficult (assuming you're not in a place where it grows outside naturally). Not only do you need a significant amount of greenhouse space (you're right--20' minimum to flower, but the vines can grow up to 120'), you also need all the very specific orchid growing conditions--low water/nutrient, high drainage soil (or bark or similar medium), high brightness (but medium direct sun--can't let 'em burn), along with a very high humidity (vanilla orchids grow best ~80-90% humidity) and high heat (ideally not dipping any lower than 15 C, but with a bit of wiggle room). They have aerial roots, so you also need to mist with diluted nutrient mix (preferably an x-x-x fertilizer (eg: 20-20-20)) for them to get any particular growth benefit. Assuming you can provide these conditions, you'll have to continue to provide these conditions for ~5-7 years, which is how long vanilla takes to grow from seed. Most people, however, take clippings from already healthy plants. Clippings need all the same care and effort of growing from seed, but won't flower 'til they're established and ~20 feet long (and the temperature controls are on-point for flowering), so how long they take depends on a bunch of factors, but even for a 3' clipping, you're looking at ~5 years. So, let's say you have flowering-capable vines, at least 20', properly cared for with appropriate temperature controls to compel flowering. The vanilla flowers for one day. Furthermore, the pollination of the one-day flower must occur by hand (you cannot use natural pollinators--there's only one species of bee capable of pollinating this thing and they're not only isolated to a very specific geographic location, but they're also rather rare). Presuming your pollination is successful it still takes, at this about, about 9-10 months for the vanilla pods to form. You'll get long green-bean lookin' things. You have to pick them as they begin to turn yellow--kinda like bananas. But the fun doesn't stop here. At this point you still have to blanche the yellowing beans, then let them sweat in a container for several weeks until you finally end up with usable vanilla pods that you might find in a store. The process is extremely involved, incredibly time consuming and each step has a number of 'gotchas' that will ruin your vine/flowering/pollination/beans. The big effort is literally just keeping up with the very specific humidity/light/temperature/nutrient requirements for so long to even get it to be flowering capable.
- hotdog97 8y agoSo, I assume everyone else's first thought after reading this was: Let's build a vanilla flower pollination robot using deep learning to process RGB camera images and help guide the robot actuators. Startup, anyone? Edit: turns out this is, in fact, not a unique thought: "Implementation of Automated Vanilla Pollination Robotic Crane Prototype, 2017": https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1109/SYSOSE.2017.7994929 https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1109/SYSOSE.2017.79949... (No deep learning, but I guess these people weren't desperate for funding.)
- metiscus 8y agoI think if you could work a blockchain in there somewhere you might have an idea worth funding. ;)
- hotdog97 8y agoWell obviously you would need a blockchain to track the investments. Each vanilla pod would have an entry in the vanilla blockchain. And also an IPv6 address. Seems like there already was something called Vanilla Coin (VNL), since rebranded/failed.
- azinman2 8y agoBecause screw those poor farmers?
- hotdog97 8y agoMeanwhile I could ask of you: why do you want to keep these people as extremely low-paid wage slaves, producing goods for the well to do, for something that can be automated? (I find it likely that automation would cause real vanilla to become so cheap that most people could enjoy it, not just the 10% richest.) The big picture is complex and it's hard to do forecasts, but I'm not entirely convinced that this kind of change would screw these farmers in the long run.
- AKifer 8y agoAnd it's even grown only in 2 very specific regions in the north of the island (where most of the cocoa production also come from). There's still huge opportunities if you have enough money and appetite for adventure to start a trading or setting up a plantation. 1ha yields on average 300-400 kg of dried vanilla, a process that takes on average 6-8 months from manual pollination to end of drying. Madagascar is quite strict on land property though, and it's one of the hot topics on the political landscape right now, foreign investors most of the time work with trusted local proxy to set up the business. I myself plan to trip to the vanilla producing region in the following months to see how it works, would be so cool to run a vanilla startup. One more thing, vanilla extract and vanilla caviar are even more valuable than the dried vanilla, and still at the hands of very few businesses. P.S. I live in Madagascar
- matthewwiese 8y agoA "vanilla startup" is perhaps one of the most interesting ideas I've read in HN comments these past few weeks. If I may ask, are you from Madagascar or an expat? This is all quite new information to me so I am fascinated to learn more. Are there any sources you would recommend?
- 0xcafecafe 8y agoOne a side note, I thought of a joke where his "vanilla startup" would be far from a "vanilla" startup. And that got me curious as to why the adjective vanilla refers to anything plain. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vanilla https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vanilla "For lexicographers, vanilla has more flavor than chocolate, because it adds a tasty synonym for plain to the English menu. The noun vanilla was first served up in 1662, but it took almost 200 years for its adjective use to become established for things, like ice and sugar, flavored with vanilla. By the 1970s vanilla was perceived as being the plain flavor of the ice-cream world, and people began using the word itself to describe anything plain, ordinary, or conventional."
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mc32 8y agoI wonder why they can’t import the necessary bees and eliminate most of the manual labor from the process?
- klez 8y agoYes, let's import an alien species in a closed ecosystem. What could go wrong?
- mc32 8y agoGranted, I guess I should have asked in the past tense? Why didn’t they? And why don’t local bees work in pollinating the vanilla vines?
- lostlogin 8y agoIt’s suprisigly complicated. The first link seems not to have had success (but it’s a surprisingly interesting read) and the second suggests that a specific, nearly extinct bee is needed. http://www.aos.org/orchids/additional-resources/pollinating-the-vanilla-flower.aspx# http://www.aos.org/orchids/additional-resources/pollinating-... https://seeds.ca/pollination/tales/vanilla-without-the-bee https://seeds.ca/pollination/tales/vanilla-without-the-bee
- ryanmarsh 8y agoIt is quite surprising this hasn’t happened yet, what with all the other bad ecological decisions that get made in the furtherance of industrial farming. Not that I don’t like vanilla or food or anything. I’m just surprised, it seems kind of an obvious business move. Maybe the bees wouldn’t survive?
- lostlogin 8y agoOr seems that a specific variety of bee is required. https://agrieducate.com.au/farming-fact-sheets/vanilla/ https://agrieducate.com.au/farming-fact-sheets/vanilla/
- 8y ago
- Felz 8y agoKeep in mind that 5/6ths of the vanillin used for flavoring is synthetic.
- plopz 8y agoImitation vanilla extract is also better in many cases as it can tolerate the high heat of baking where natural vanilla doesn't do as well.
- sten 8y agoRule of thumb in these cases is to use natural vanilla for items that do not get baked. Such as ice creams or cake frosting. And use the artificial vanilla for baked goods. And even then I lean towards the natural stuff when I bake. Real vanilla has a complexity and depth to it, like a fine cigar, you can sit and savor it.
- crimsonalucard 8y agoAlthough technically correct, imitation is a deceptive term. Vanillin is the key flavoring agent found in vanilla. Synthesizing vanillin is not creating an imitation, it is synthesizing the exact same compound that exists in nature. There is literally no point in growing vanilla to extract vanillin if vanillin can be synthesized artificially for much cheaper. Though if you're going for compounds other than vanillin that exist within the vanilla plant itself... that's a different story.
- Alex3917 8y agoThere are tons of plants that have the same flavor profile as vanilla, just not ones that retain their flavor when dried for years on end. But if you're just making ice cream, you could just as easily use black locust flowers or whatever and no one would know the difference.
- markbnj 8y agoSure, most natural flavorings have artificial substitutes, but there is a market for the natural products even if nobody could really distinguish them by taste alone.
- soperj 8y agoblack lotus flowers would be a natural substitute.
- FreeFull 8y agoThis comment reads a bit like a non-sequitur, given Alex was talking about natural substitutes for vanilla, and not artificial ones.
- markbnj 8y agoGood point, hastily written and deserves the down votes :). I really meant to say that some people want natural vanilla, and will pay for it.
- 8y ago
- killjoywashere 8y agoThe silver:vanilla ratio really drove home that it's not just "location, location, location" but the rise in global population and global incomes drives the value of 'location'.
- ggg9990 8y agoOne island contains 100% of the world’s Mongolians — Eurasia.
- saagarjha 8y agoI’m sure there are Mongolians living in the United States and elsewhere.
- njarboe 8y agoOne island the size of France.
- makmanalp 8y ago> it's one of the few regions with the right climate that is also poor enough to make laborious hand-pollination affordable It's not like I didn't know that this is how the world works, but this specific case is even more of a slap in the face. It's kinda fucked up to think that in the local specialty store merely a couple pods of vanilla (a few grams each) go for 6-7 dollars, but these folks live in poverty. But more fucked up is the implication that to keep vanilla prices down we specifically maintain these conditions, because of cheap labor. Oh well, the artificial stuff for me from now on.
- ethanwillis 8y agoSo they're better off if you destroy a local industry? Instead you should figure out what part of the supply chain is causing the local farmers to not get paid (or maybe theyre the problem and need to pay their laborers more money.). And then campaign against that or make technology to effectively destroy the middle-men. There's plenty more high value products than Vanilla I assure you where the end-workers are living in poverty.
- DiffEq 8y agoJust because there is cheap labor here does not mean they live in poverty; in fact they do not. The cost and standard of living is much lower so the wage is not as bad as you think. Sure they don't drive BMWs and don't get their coffee at Starbucks or have a $1000 iphone but they are far from living in "poverty"; since the definition of "poverty" is poorly constructed. In any case lets say we accept they live in poverty - the agricultural sales of this product and other such products are all they have to hope for. The main problem is with the years if government/military corruption and strife. If that was rid of the country would be wealthy. By not buying their products you help to worsen the poverty; if you do buy, there is hope that the money will eventually improve things. But if they have no money - things will not be improved and this market will shift elsewhere eventually. http://www.borgenmagazine.com/why-is-madagascar-poor/ http://www.borgenmagazine.com/why-is-madagascar-poor/
- zajd 8y ago> if you do buy, there is hope that the money will eventually improve things Not with the current model of economic exploitation pursued by western firms. They will never get the money because the companies operating the plantations simply don't have to give it to them and Madagascar's ability to govern itself is completely compromised by outside money. I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for the Nigerian people to receive the fruits of their labor as opposed to Shell, the corporation who's bribing the government to keep conditions as profitable as possible.
- specializeded 8y agoPro tip: if you’re near the border or a Mexican grocery store, Mexican Vanilla is absurdly cheaper!
- goda90 8y agoSupposedly a lot of Mexican-made vanilla extracts are cut with tonka beans that aren't FDA approved. But I bet making your own extract out of Mexican vanilla beans would be a great alternative.
- Finnucane 8y agoAnd right now, if you're anywhere else, you can't get Mexican vanilla at all. Last year I got a half a pound for $55, today the usual dealers are all out. What vanilla they have is going for $300 or more per pound. Back in 2005, when there was a similar shortage, the market collapsed almost literally overnight when there was a better harvest in Madagascar, but there's really high demand now. A few years ago you could get PNG vanilla for $20 per pound.
- jacquesm 8y agoSomething similar is the case with Maple syrup.
- stcredzero 8y agoIsn't the real question, whether or not we can cultivate the Melipona bee in greenhouses?
- aportnoy 8y agoMadagascar isn't the smallest island on Earth, you know.
- astine 8y agoIndeed, Madagascar is larger than many nations. It's not surprising that a single nation should dominate trade in a particular good. About 60% of the world's cork comes from the Spain and Portugal which together have about the same landmass as Madagascar.
- zaroth 8y agoI paid $32 for a 32oz jug of vanilla extract off Amazon back in 2015. I just checked and the same container is now $140! [1] I’m going to have to start rationing! Check out the price graph: https://camelcamelcamel.com/Nielsen-Massey-Madagascar-Bourbon-Vanilla-Extract/product/B001GE8N4Y https://camelcamelcamel.com/Nielsen-Massey-Madagascar-Bourbo... [1] - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001GE8N4Y/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_qJtlBbV1156XV https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001GE8N4Y/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_qJtl...
- H1Supreme 8y agoWhy so much? Do you own a bakery or something?
- zaroth 8y agoHaha. No, but it never goes bad and I really liked paying $1/oz instead of more like $4/oz for the tiny bottles at the supermarket. I do tend to make French toast for the kids a couple times a week, so we do use quite a bit. I usually just kinda splash it in the bowl, I guess I have to start measuring now!
- huy-nguyen 8y agoYou can dive into more details about world trade in vanilla (who export/import it and to whom, how has the composition of exporters/importers changed over time etc) with this app: http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/?country=undefined&partner=undefined&product=730&productClass=HS&startYear=undefined&target=Product&year=2016 http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/?country=undefined&part... Disclaimer: I'm part of the team that made the app.
- pkulak 8y agoI've found fake vanilla extract to be indistinguishable in all cooking, and far cheaper. I'm far more worried about the world's coffee supplies. :/
- Scaevolus 8y agoMadagascar provides 0.3% of the world's coffee-- you'll be fine :-) http://www.ico.org/prices/po-production.pdf http://www.ico.org/prices/po-production.pdf Artificial vanilla flavoring (vanillin) is actually preferred for many applications where the alcohol in true vanilla extract can't evaporate off and will harm the flavor more than the extra aromatic compounds will help.
- atomical 8y agoBill Penzey likes to send out political emails to his customers as well. He requested that Trump voters apologize. It's hard to take anything he says seriously because of his poor business acumen.
- lordnacho 8y ago> In 1841, one young innovator figured out an unlikely solution. Edmond Albius was a 12-year-old slave on the French-controlled island of Réunion, in the Indian Ocean. Using a stick and his thumb, Albius pushed together the male anthers and female stigma of the vanilla flower, pollinating it efficiently. Did nobody think of this until years after vanilla was discovered? Really? What's really interesting is how comparative advantage takes shape. There's several everyday products that originate in just one or a few places. Additional question: why isn't Mexico the main producer?
- selectodude 8y agoBecause every single vanilla pod needs to be hand pollinated, and the labor in Mexico is too expensive.
- dghughes 8y agoIt's quite delicate work to hand pollinate vanilla orchids this guy tried it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_Pguwl9c1Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_Pguwl9c1Q
- parrellel 8y agoIs any one else going to call bull on Madagascar being described as "One Island" It's the size of the entire North East. It's twice the size of Britain. The rest of the article's fine, but, really, click-bait much.
- chrisbennet 8y agoWhy they don't they grow it in Mexico? I'm missing something I know. It would seem that having bees pollinate the vanilla flowers in Mexico would be cheaper than having people do it in Madagascar. Thoughts?
- oxymoron 8y agoIt’s like this with almost all crops. In their natural habitat there are also pests which has evolved to parasite the plant. This usually makes large scale agriculture difficult or even impossible. By moving a crop to some place far away you remove the natural enemies of the crop, which makes growing the crop much easier, at least for a grace period of a few decades, or even a few centuries.
- chrisbennet 8y agoThanks! Learned something new today.
- coldseattle 8y agoOne island grows 99% of the world’s kangaroos.