8 ms·
Mexico’s underground vanilla economy
- PM_me_your_math 3y agoI thought this was about Mexico's trade in stolen social security numbers from Americans.
- mqus 3y agoThe biggest surprise to me is the graphic in the article showing the top vanilla exporters. How are countries like germany, france or canada up there? I thought vanilla was more of a tropical plant? Or does this include artificial vanilla as well?
- seszett 3y agoFrance is actually one of the main producers (in Réunion - where the hand pollination process was discovered - and French Polynesia) but I guess the others are just doing some import/export.
- mianos 3y agoMost vanilla flavour, 99%, is produced by creating synthetic vanillin. I guess this is included.
- crazygringo 3y agoThat 99% (or 1%) value keeps getting repeated in countless blog posts and articles, but I've never seen an actual source. And I find it hard to believe, given that Coca-Cola uses real vanilla and is so widely consumed. Surely more than 1% of people's overall vanilla consumption is in Coca-Cola? Or I wonder if the ratio is vastly different worldwide vs. in the US?
- mercutio2 3y agoWhat gave you the impression Coca Cola uses vanilla beans OR vanillin? Different regions use different ingredients for Coke, so I guess it’s possible this is true in your region, but my coke can in California doesn’t appear to list Vanilla in its ingredients. Additionally, there was this lawsuit about Vanilla Orange Coke containining vanillin, which leads me to think it’s unlikely there’s much Vanilla Bean involved in non-Vanilla Coke, at least: https://www.classaction.org/news/fake-vanilla-coca-cola-company-facing-class-action-over-labeling-of-orange-vanilla-coke https://www.classaction.org/news/fake-vanilla-coca-cola-comp... With that said, numbers like 99% of vanilla being from vanillin does sound like a made up statistic.
- mianos 3y agoWhile I agree that 99% seems made up. I am a bit of a chemistry hobbyist and produce a wide range of flavourings. I have also been to vanilla farms and bought lots of vanilla pods. The yield from vanilla pods, not matter what process I tried, such as, a very long soak on ethanol, hot ethanol or Soxhlet extraction, yield so little I find it hard to believe any of those bulk consumer products container real vanilla from pods. Just anecdotal or course, a sample of one and all that. :)
- moritzwarhier 3y agoI also see no rational reason that the average Coca Cola serving contain any amount of real vanilla pods, given how expensive it is and that vanillin is chemically identical with one main flavoring compund contained in real vanilla. If Coke (or Coke Vanilla even) would cobtain real vanilla, they'd advertise it for sure. I don't remember anything like that
- ForOldHack 3y ago"Together they make up a vanilla flavor. Vanillin is just one molecule in that complex mixture, but an important one. However, whereas vanilla will always contain vanillin, just because something contains vanillin doesn't mean it contains vanilla beans." Two thins: Its up to the local bottler whether to use Cane Sugar or beet sugar or Vanilla or Vanillin. Mexican coke uses both Cane sugar and Vanilla. A bar coke from a canister usually had the syrup a bit heavy so you can taste the difference much easier.
- hinkley 3y agoI bet you'd be surprised how much synthetic vanilla someone like Nabisco could go through without making something 'vanilla flavored'. Vanilla in chocolate flavored items punches up the flavor.
- justinator 3y agoThe ingredients of Coca-Cola are a trade secret.
- iszomer 3y agoMaybe they'll go back to using castoreum..
- hinkley 3y agoNot enough beavers. But we make red food coloring out of ground up bugs so maybe.
- lm28469 3y agoTheir source seems a bit sketchy: https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/vanilla https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/vanilla It looks more like a simple data processing, like grabbing any "vanilla beans" trades, adding the "outs" and subtracting the "ins" If you look at other sources you'll find stuff like: > In 2021, Germany imported 695 tonnes of vanilla, worth €83 million, and exported 245 tonnes, resulting in a net consumption of 450 tonnes. https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/spices-herbs/vanilla/market-potential https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/spices-herbs/vanilla/m...
- rafram 3y agoThe OEC is trustworthy; that’s just what exports are. The source of the product doesn’t matter. If it enters through one of Germany’s ports, that’s an import, and if it exits through another, that’s an export. So these numbers probably just indicate that Germany is a common port of entry for vanilla headed to other EU countries (although most of the vanilla it imports stays in the country).
- lm28469 3y agoOf course, I'm just saying it's not about production (of real or synthetic vanilla) which is what the person I'm replied to asked
- londons_explore 3y agoThe pods are harvested by hand right? It has to be quite an undertaking to harvest 15 acres of tiny pods by hand in the middle of the night without the landowner noticing... Besides, if theft really was a huge problem and the goods really that valuable, you'd just leave someone to sleep in a tent in the middle of the fields during the critical harvest time. Something smells fishy about this story...
- ciabattabread 3y agoThe paranoid arrogance of HN commenters! Now go buy some bitcoin.
- krisoft 3y ago> The paranoid arrogance of HN commenters! Yeah, i mean we all should accept everything written in every article with no critical thinking whatsoever. You choose to interpret the comment as arogant. I choose to interpret it that they see an obvious solution which is neither mentioned nor implemented and thus they have questions about what they are missing. Clearly if what one sees as obvious is not done then one is likely missing something important.
- sli 3y agoA single person cannot guard 15 acres of crops. The arrogance is the assumption that the farmers are so stupid that they didn't even try this "simple solution" that would never work.
- valvar 3y agoThey were questioning the story, not the intelligence of the farmers.
- krisoft 3y ago> A single person cannot guard 15 acres of crops. But that is the question: why can’t a single person guard the crop? The answer to that question would reveal more about the shape of the problem. Is it because the single guard won’t even see and hear when the illegal harvesters get to work? (That is to say harvesting is so quick and silent that the guard would be none the wiser?) Is it because the guard would see the harvest but would be overwhelmed by the illegal harvesters?
- tmnvix 3y agoLast year I came across a stall at my local fruit and vegetable market in NZ. It was selling only vanilla pods - which seemed odd to me as there couldn't be that much demand for vanilla in such a small market. After talking with the stallholder, he told me that he had come from the Cook Islands on behalf of a government trade delegation hoping to promote their vanilla. Interestingly, nobody there farms it but they have an abundance growing wild - enough that they were hoping to establish an industry.
- teruakohatu 3y agoWhere in NZ did you see that?
- tmnvix 3y agoNewtown, Wellington.
- woleium 3y agoWait, what? I thought all vanilla had to be hand pollinated at great expense.. at least the article I read about Madagascars vanilla farms said that the pollinator had been lost, and now vanilla is dependent on humans.
- MrOwen 3y agoHad the pollinators been lost because they were never natively there in the first place? Madagascar vanilla is an imperial creation, courtesy of the French. Perhaps not as much of a problem in vanilla's native habitat, Mexico.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoNow I'm going to take that statement with a grain of salt; what if that's just a rumour that the vanilla industry spread to increase the value?
- jahlove 3y agoInsider did a video on this exact problem. https://youtu.be/_VQ-ckQPD2I https://youtu.be/_VQ-ckQPD2I
- gavanm 3y agoI'm not sure if the video covers it, but I do recall reading that in Madagascar, they mark the beans with pinprick initials so that it's easier to identify if they've been stolen. https://www.vanillabeankings.com/blogs/recipes/vanilla-bean-tattoos https://www.vanillabeankings.com/blogs/recipes/vanilla-bean-... I might even have read about it originally from here. Of course that only helps if they're recovered / identified quickly - once any significant amount of co-mingling happens then it's probably too much effort to track down the origin.
- Spunkie 3y agoThey kind of gloss over the whole "he only has one day to notice a flower blooming" which implies he is doing hand pollination. But I thought Mexico was one of the few places in the world that had natural vanilla pollinators?
- markdown 3y agoThose pollinators do well enough on random wild vanilla plants. They aren't honey bees that need to spend every daylight hour visiting hundreds of flowers. They simply can't do what's needed in a commercial vanilla patch.
- tiahura 3y agoThe best comes from Taha’a.
- seraphsf 3y agoIt’s striking that: “The justice system in Veracruz can’t be relied on to investigate, punish, or deter criminals, nor has the government launched a major campaign to boost the vanilla industry” And later: “In Mexico, the majority of businesses are small, informal, and off the books.” It’s a tragic catch-22 of developing nations that governments are inept and corrupt for lack of funds. While distrust of government and rampant tax avoidance cause systemic underfunding.
- Dr_Birdbrain 3y agoSource: I lived in Mexico for a few years. I don’t think it’s accurate to say Mexican governments are underfunded—they have oil money, from the nationalized oil industry, to the extent that they are extremely chilled out about tax collection. It’s not that they are underfunded, but the criminal gangs (drugs, extortion, etc) are absurdly overfunded. Strong organized crime weakens and delegitimizes the government, which means that weaker, petty crime can also thrive. Like if you are sick with something big, small infections are more likely to opportunistically take advantage of your weak immune system. Aside from organized crime, there is something else that is hard to articulate. It’s hard to explain exactly what it is, but to a large extent it feels like the population at large can’t agree who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, I.e. in many cases they will not unambiguously say that the drug cartels are bad and the government is good. They’re probably right about that, in many cases the two are inextricably enmeshed. It’s a vicious spiral that is hard to break, expectations of crime and corruption lead to more crime and corruption, but in many cases people won’t even agree that the gangsters are unambiguously bad. Sometimes the baddies get lionized to an unhelpful extent, and there are even ballads “narcocorridos” written about their exploits
- miguelazo 3y ago>criminal gangs (drugs, extortion, etc) are absurdly overfunded Not only this, they are "overarmed" with military grade weapons thanks to the USA's insane gun laws. The saying of (former president/dictator) Porfirio Diaz, "Poor Mexico: so far from God and so close to the United States" rings just as true today, if not more so. >to a large extent it feels like the population at large can’t agree who are the good guys and who are the bad guys As if this is any different in the US, where film and music have also lionized the "baddies" for well over a hundred years!
- veave 3y agoSomeone should tell Nathaniel Parish Flannery to clean the lenses of his phone before he takes pictures with it.
- BSEdlMMldESB 3y agomexico has a lot of underground economies: step 1: wage a war of disinformation of vanilla "vanilla is getting the kids high" step 2: end up making it illegal, of course, vanilla will keep coming step 3: declare war on vanilla because of reasons step 4: profit! punchline step: replace vanilla with marijuana, or other native south American plants (cocaine).