[OGD] the world of vanilla

"GROWERS carrying their beans to market in Madagascar and Mexico have been 
murdered for a few kilos of the crop.
In Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, buyers charter private jets to visit the 
cropping areas to keep their destinations secret from one another.
...
one US importer was told by his insurance company to split his stock 
between three warehouses several miles apart for fear that a plane might 
crash into one of the buildings and wipe out his entire business.

It?s a crop so aromatic that drug smugglers use it to conceal their... 
merchandise.
...
vanilla...
the supply of which has always been subject to wild fluctuations based on 
everything from weather to stories spread by speculators.
...
the price of vanilla pods has risen on world markets in the past two months 
by 20 per cent amid a massive failure of the crop in Mexico and further 
problems in India.
That has led buyers to stockpile from the few other countries that produce 
this... commodity, leading to fears of a more serious increase in the 
coming months...

?The vanilla orchid...  flower... has only a slight scent, with no element 
of vanilla flavour or aroma,? writes Tim Ecott in his book Vanilla.
...
It was first cultivated by the Totonac people on the Gulf Coast of Mexico.
They gave the tradition to their Aztec conquerors, who in turn revealed it 
to spanish invaders led by Hernan Cortes in the early 16th century.
The Aztec emperor Montezuma taught Cortes how to mix it as a drink with 
chocolate, an idea that he... relayed to Europe.

Around 80 years later... Queen Elizabeth I?s apothecary suggested that 
vanilla could be used as a stand-alone flavour.
...
Nowadays, Mexico is responsible only for about 6 per cent of world vanilla 
production.
The major cultivator became Madagascar...
A tropical cyclone ravaged croplands there in the seventies and another one 
in 2000 saw wholesale prices rise from a low of $20 a kilo to... $500.

That brought other countries into the industry and Indonesia is now the 
biggest producer, accounting for 35 per cent of the world total. But that 
total is less than 7,000 tonnes a year, so shortages in any one area can 
have a huge impact.

NOW the price is $30 a kilo ? which still makes vanilla a remarkably 
expensive crop.
...
drying, curing and conditioning the pods is an art that takes... nine months.
....
95 per cent of ?vanilla? products are flavoured with vanillin...
This can be obtained from pine tree sap and most synthetic vanillin is a 
byproduct of the pulp used in papermaking."

URL : http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/312397

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