Growing vanilla beans in Madagascar

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Vanilla or how to link conservation and sustainable development in Mananara-Nord, Madagascar

The Mananara-Nord Biosphere Reserve in Madagascar meets all of the conditions for vanilla cultivation. For the local communities, it is a great opportunity to easily combine environmental protection by planting vanilla trees that depend on a healthy forest and sustainable development through the sale of vanilla.

Conserving the canopy to keep producing vanilla

The vanilla tree is an understory vine. It uses other trees to grow and find shade. While Madagascar lost almost 50% of its forest cover since the 1950s, the culture of vanilla in agroforests maintains forest ecosystems that are not at risk of being further cleared or converted. 

Agroforests are complex human-managed forest systems that function in ways that are ecologically similar to that of a natural forest. They provide many ecosystem services such as food, medicine and energy to the surrounding population.

They can also be used to grow vanilla. They provide the necessary support and shade, but also the ecological balance that vanilla trees need, such as maintaining a sufficient population of predators to defend the crop against pests. 

Cultivating for the community

The first farmers' association was created in 2004, and there are now six cooperatives with 2,553 members cultivating 809,785 vanilla trees in the Mananara-Nord Biosphere Reserve. All are certified organic and fair trade. Together, the cooperatives have been able to negotiate a favourable price with five exporters, thus ensuring a fair and equitable income for the farmers and their families, and benefits for the whole community. 

Since 2013 and the price surge, vanilla has become a luxury product. Gross sales of vanilla are estimated at USD 950 per year per vanilla farmer (USD 18/kg for green vanilla and USD 70/kg for dried vanilla). By comparison, more than 80% of the population lives below the poverty line in Madagascar, which is around USD 690 per year (World Bank, 2012). 

Part of the income is given back to the community to maintain infrastructure (rehabilitation of schools, the hospital, bridges, roads, public lighting) and to purchase equipment (for vanilla cultivation, school kits or health kits for the hospital). 

Sorting and packaging dried vanilla beans
Women sorting and packaging vanilla beans in Mananara Nord Biosphere Reserve, Madagascar

Mananara-Nord was designated a biosphere reserve in 1990. There are two main ecosystems: a terrestrial ecosystem and a marine ecosystem, both of which are essential to the life of the local population, from a food, economic, social and cultural point of view.