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'''Whether exploring a national park in the SAVA region or just travelling through Sambava, the de facto world capital of the world's vanillaagriculture, a tour of a vanilla plantation combined with a visit to a vanilla production and export facility will provide give visitors an insight into the lenghty and labour intensive procedure process of transforming the green fruits of the vanilla orchid into its a fragrant black natural vanilla spice that makes it is the much loved and highly priced appreciated ingredient in certain quality ice creams, chocolates pastries and gourmet desertscountless other food products.'''
What can be seen and experienced will depend depends on the activities that are ongoing during a visithappening at the time of visiting. Between May and June, the plucking picking of green vanilla beans are completed is done across plantations on the northwest coast around Sambava, Antalaha and Vohemar as well as further into the countrysideinland, while at higher altitudes, around Andapa and Marojejy, the harvesting usually takes place in July or and early August.
After harvesting, the green vanilla crops are brought by the farmers to organised green vanilla trade events markets across the all vanilla producing regions where buyers will place bids for the their yearly harvests. A minimum price is for the farmers crops is set by the governent each year, which in 2022 was 75,000 Ar per kilogram of green vanilla.
The crops are bought mostly by exporters whowill who manage the months-long transforming process of the green beans into black vanilla beans. As the bens The beans will lose moisture and shrink in size during the drying process, for and every six kilos of green vanilla, beans will yeild approximately one kilo kilogram of black vanilla beans will result.
Througout the transformation, known as the curing process, the beans are graded and grouped into classifications: Grade A being Gourmet Quality, Grade B Extract quality and Grade C which are known as Cuts & Splits. The classifications are sometimes confused with presumed to be indicators of overall quality , but they are in fact classifications of himidity and suitability for different end-uses and levels of himidity. Low-humidity beans are simply suitable best suited for large-scale food processing purposes, since they can easily ground into powder and mixed into various food products. Grade B, or Extract grade vanilla beans, is the a definition for the vanilla that is considered typically suited for the production of vanilla extracts, while Grade A beans, or gourmet quality beans, are selected in part for their appearanceand therefore more attractive to end-consumers who split open the pods to use for various home baking purposes.
In Madagascar, vanilla is rarely used in cooking and home baking and is almost exclusively farmed for export purposes. Since the price of black vanilla peaked in 2018 and 2019 at around USD 500 per kiloin 2018 and 2019, countless farmers invested their time and effort in cultivating more vanilla as a main their primary cash crop.
Vanilla beans grow best in light but shaded conditions. Partly and fully grown green vanilla beans can be seen at plantations between March and up until harvesting time.
Historically, the type of vanilla grown in Madagascar is of the Planifolia species, also known as Bourbon vanilla or simply Madagascar vanilla. The "Bourbon" part refers to a French owned slave on La Reunion, known as Bourbon Island, who discovered the how to pollinate vanilla by hand-pollination method, since without hand-pollination in a the orchids original environment, pollination can only be performend ony occurs by a bee bees native to Mexico.
Apart from flavouring sweets in countless food and drink products, vanilla is also used in essential oils, cosmetics, toiletries, perfumes as well as in medicines. Vanillin ...
