The Curse of the Green Gold

“Who says money does not grow on trees?” Geeta Pandey of the BBC could not have concluded her story on the unique saga of vanilla cultivation in India better. All praise for the “discovery of a new gold” by the villagers of Kerala, the report (Vanilla Sweetens Indians’ lives, BBC, February 24, 2004) stands testimony to one of the many orchestrated attempts to introduce a new crop into an already weak and vulnerable agrarian economy that has failed. The campaign left large sections of farmers who invested money in the exotic crop without knowing the real implications of solely depending on a highly volatile global market ruined.

 

National and international media were upbeat over the spread of vanilla cultivation in Kerala from the 1990s through the early years of the new century. Success stories of common-people-turned-millionaires became a staple diet for the media. 

 

The BBC story is just one among a plethora of reports that cropped up even before a credible and stable market was established for natural vanilla in the country. Newspapers in Kerala continuously ran success stories of vanilla. A major magazine dealing with rural issues and published by a leading South Indian media house did a series of stories on it. Other magazines and newspapers followed suit. Vanilla means profit, Vanilla won’t ditch you, and The new green gold were some of the fancy headlines doing the rounds. 

 

“Today almost everyone in Kerala, from farmers and engineers to lawyers and housewives, is cultivating vanilla,” exclaimed the BBC. Though the claim was too loud for any average editor, nobody on the desk of the acclaimed news organisation cared to strike it out. Vanilla can only be grown at certain elevations, making it geographically impossible for almost 80 per cent of state to grow the vine, even if they wished to. “Many have already become rupee millionaires,” the reporter claimed, and that the farmers were “all laughing all the way to the bank.”

 

This is not to suggest that the BBC story cajoled farmers into vanilla cultivation. But it must have had some effect on global agricultural innovators, withthe story being quoted in various websites on vanilla. It made an ideal “awareness material” in thehands of vanilla companies and the tag of the BBC added credibility. 

 

Stories of rupee-millionaires were followed by another exotic find – a vanilla village going sky high in production, reaping huge returns from the magic crop. Ramamangalam, a village 35 km from Kochi, was in the limelight as the biggest producer of vanilla in India. A national business paper, otherwise known for sober reportage and balanced treatment gushed about Ramamangalam, hailing it as the only village in the country that was going into a organised and sceintific cultivation of the so called king of spices.

 

Stories on Ramamangalam turned the place into a pilgrim spot of sorts for the vanilla aspirants from south India. People flocked the village to have a first hand experience of the vanilla success and carried the message all over. Different organisations conducted tours to vanilla plantations. 

 

Those were times when a one metre long vanilla vine cutting cost Rs 150! The price of vanilla beans too spiked. Fresh vanilla beans brought Rs 3,500 to 4,000 per kg, while the cured beans fetched Rs 36,000 per kg. A single healthy vine could yield 10-12 kgs of beans a year making a single vine worth Rs 40,000 to 80,000. The inflated prices, media campaign and the assurances from the agencies like the Spices Board did the trick. Vanilla went viral!

 

But the hype over the wonder crop withered faster than the crop itself. What the media did not explain was the reason behind the phenomenon. The peak prices were the result of widespread damage caused to plantations in Madagascar, the highest producer-exporter of vanilla in the world. It takes three years for vanilla to be ready for the first harvest. Plantations in Madagascar bounced back in three years and a rude shock was awaiting the Kerala farmers. 

 

The media soon fell silent – a sly silence that betrayed its complicity. The vanilla saga turned bitter as the global demand dwindled and prices nose-dived, making it a speculative agrarian gamble promoted by government agencies and egged on by the media gone terribly wrong. In fact the media had warned of a ‘market stabilisation.’ But who, including the most cynical pessimist, could have predicted a fall from Rs 4,000 per kg to Rs 25? Thus ended the green gold rush in Kerala.

 

Now, Ramamangalam is no longer in the news and is back to its calm routine. Many, including the National Award winning vanilla farmer, have weeded out vanilla vines from their grove.