PHOTOS: Vanilla Boom Is Making People Crazy Rich — And Jittery — In Madagascar
"80% of the world's vanilla is grown by small holding farmers in the hilly forests of
Madagascar. For a generation the price languished below $50 a kilo (about 2.2 pounds) but in 2015 it began to rise at an extraordinary rate and for the past four years has hovered at ten times that amount, between $400 and $600 a kilo."
"The rise is partly due to increased global demand, partly due to decreased supply, as storms have destroyed many vines, and a lot to do with speculation. Local middle men have rushed into the market, leveraging deals between village growers and the international flavor companies that distill the cured beans into extract and sell it to the big multinationals like Mars, Archer Daniels Midland and Unilever."
"In the meantime farmers are getting rich, richer than their wildest dreams. Felicité Raminisoa's family has gone from subsistence farming — a little rice, bananas and coffee "but these crops didn't improve our lives," said her father — to earning over $20,000 over the past four years. That's enough to buy a new house in town (where they're sending her four children to school), a new electricity generator, better mattresses, a cow and a rice threshing machine they hope to rent out for extra income."