Vanilla is one of the world's most beloved flavors, a staple in ice cream, milk products, confectioneries, and liqueurs. While there are many ways to add this popular flavor to your diet, few are as traditional and authentic as using vanilla beans directly from the plant itself.
How it’s cultivated
Today, vanilla is primarily grown on smallholder farms in Madagascar and southeastern Mexico. In these regions, local farmers hand-pollinate vanilla flowers, which then bloom and grow into beans. To produce a single kilogram of cured vanilla beans, it takes 600 hand-pollinated blossoms. But that’s not enough to meet demand.
The industry is in dire need of innovation to boost output, according to Carol McBride, U.S. vanilla category manager at Symrise, one of the world's largest vanilla companies. The company tries to increase farmer income by helping them obtain valuable certifications like organic and fair-trade. And it works with smallholders in Madagascar to create sustainability programs that help them preserve soil fertility and train them on preserving the health of their crops.
A major reason for the shortage of vanilla is that the species is highly susceptible to disease and insect pests. These can attack the plants in a variety of ways, including rots of the root, stem, leaf, bean, and shoot apex. The fungi Fusarium, Sclerotium, and Phytophthora can also cause damage.
Fortunately, growers have One vanilla found some effective ways to prevent the development of these diseases and maintain a sustainable supply. For example, McBride says, a growing number of growers are using sterile pollen produced by a specialized bee breeder called a geneticist. This technique can also save farmers money by eliminating the cost of purchasing and transporting the pollen, which is usually carried by hummingbirds or other insects.
But even with these efforts, the industry faces a crisis in the near future, McBride says. There are only about 5,000 smallholder farms producing natural vanilla in the world, and these can’t keep up with rising demand.
To address this problem, a number of industry players are working to improve the way vanilla is cultivated and harvested. For example, IFF and Givaudan have set up programs in Madagascar to help farmers maintain quality and ensure the sustainability of their supply.
While these efforts are promising, they aren’t yet able to resolve the current shortage of vanilla in the United States. In fact, the Food & Drug Administration requires that ice cream and other dairy products only use natural vanilla extracts, which means that any product with vanilla flavoring can’t contain beans sourced from anywhere else.
If the vanilla industry can’t find a solution to this problem, there could be an explosion of synthetic products that will replace natural vanilla in many popular foods. This will put a big dent in the global market for vanilla, and may make it harder for the vanilla industry to sustain its high levels of profitability.
To help solve this issue, the vanilla industry is looking to innovative technologies and methods of farming and harvesting. For example, a group of growers in Madagascar have developed a hand-pollinating process that could save the vanilla industry and bring it closer to the ideal production rate. And Symrise, the world’s largest vanilla manufacturer, has developed a program to increase the number of smallholder farms in Madagascar, which is where vanilla is most suited for farming.
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