Report from Madagascar Feb/Mar 2019 (1): Agroforestry Vanilla

coen.mg/ 4月 14, 2019/ cooperative now, tweet/ 0 comments

I visited Madagascar last February to March. I will report the visit with several articles.

The main purpose of the trip was to purchase vanilla. I visited places of both Agroforestry Vanilla and Chameleon Vanilla.

Firstly, I went to see Agroforestry Vanilla. After a 30 hour flight from Tokyo to Antananarivo, I went to Toamasina by 8 hour drive of taxi blues, then another 4 hour drive took me to the destination. The long transportation made me totally exhausted and I got fever. It seemed difficult for me to adjust huge circumstance gap from winter in Japan to summer in Madagascar. Malaria!?, measles!? I became a bit nervous because it was the first time for me to have fever in Madagascar. But on the other hand, I was so excited to be in Madagascar that I actively had meetings with cooperative, visited farmers and enjoyed shopping in the town.

To be honest, I almost gave up to buy Agroforestry Vanilla this season when I couldn’t make pre-payment to keep enough green vanilla for me last July, which they require, but with slight hope to be able to get small amount which they cure for others as last season. However, the cooperative had no vanilla with them this season. I had lost all of my hope before the cooperative announced me that some member farmers cured vanilla by themselves and they could sell it to me. I happily went to see their vanilla.

The vanilla beans were very thick and long. They were very good beans but… smell was not perfect. It was not what I expected and I could buy only very small amount. Farmers were very dissapointed and so was I. This made me realise that I definitely have to make contract with them and make pre-payment in July to get good vanilla. I have to follow their normal way to make the business successful. Because I know doing pre-payment in July is really difficult for companies, I have decided to prepare enough money for pre-payment by myself.

By the way, there was not only sad things but I had good things as well. I could get green pepper, cinnamon, clove, lemon grass and wild pepper this time. Since their plantations are agroforestry and they have many kinds of products, I want to import not only vanilla but other products, too. I am visiting and asking patissiers and restaurant chefs in Japan to find out if the products are good enough to use and what possibility they have in Japan market.

I am especially interested in wild pepper among them as it is native species and we can see it only in Madagascar. It has aromatic smell which green pepper doesn’t have. I hope the elegant smell will attract many people in Japan.

Because wild pepper would be collected from native forest, the amount we can get is small. Farmers now would go to forest to get it while some farmers are promoting a project aiming to conserve wild pepper and try to cultivate it in agroforestry. I visited and saw the project. I will report it next time.