Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world. Luckily, they can still
get some revenues from vanilla-trading. Vanilla is the most famous Malagasy product in the world. A lot of premium brands use Malagasy vanilla, for example; Ben & Jerry’s, Marks & Spencer desserts, Magnum and a lot of other brands,… . Vanilla is a premium flavour for many products.In Madagascar, 28% of the children between five and seventeen already work a day job. In Northern Madagascar, children are forced to work 6 or 7 hours a day on their parents’ fields. The reason? Children have to help put money on the table and aren’t even given the most basic education.
One black vanilla pod sells up to 4£ a piece in British supermarkets. Small growers can sell their vanilla to Société Vanille de Sambaya, which organizes auctions twice a year.
Nowadays vanilla is no longer a guaranteed source of income for the Malagasy people . A few years ago a kilo of vanilla sold for 600$, now a kilo is only worth 20$. We could conclude that the standard of living has decreased immensely. The vanilla pods have to go through a whole process, this means that the cultivation is very labour-intensive.
Vanilla has become very popular in the west, and Madagascar has become a symbol of quality. Big companies like Unilever have strict ethical standards, they don’t want to buy vanilla anymore from suppliers who work with children. By the end of 2013, Ben & Jerry’s promised to only use fair-trade-certified products
Opinion
For many poor families in poor countries, the help from their children is desperately needed. If they want a decent income to survive. Most families in countries like Madagascar have a bunch of children, their parents cannot pay an education for them. It’s very sad for the Malagasy that the price of the vanilla pods plummeted so much, because this is one of the most important incomes for Madagascar. Sadly enough, vanilla is not as scarce as for example diamond in Sierra Leone.
As we all know the Malagasy government is corrupt, this is also one of the important aspects why Madagascar is so poor.
Visiting Madagascar was a big experience for me. The Malagasy people are not sad because they are poor, they are always happy and enthusiastic. Madagascar is not a dry country at all, that’s why they can cultivate their own food instead of importing it.
Maybe if Madagascar could negotiate a better price for their products, they wouldn’t be as poor as they are right now.
Julie Deaulmerie
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article7060962.ece
Hi Julie,
ReplyDeleteI found your article very interesting, I actually didn’t know that Madagascar is the world's largest producer and exporter of vanilla. It is indeed chocking that the vanilla prices have shrunk that much! In underdeveloped countries child labour is a well know phenomenon, it’s sad that little children have to work to help put money on the table. How can countries develop when children aren’t even given the most basic education? However I think that, like you mentioned, those people don’t have an unhappy life. In our society people always want more and more, and people aren’t satisfied anymore with the little things in life. I believe that those people might not know that much luxury as we do, but they are happy.
Kind regards
Aurélie Van Daele
(2MA6)