The demand for vanilla on the international market has increased over the past ten years. While the price for 1 kg of vanilla is higher than for 1 kg of silver as Kenya and Tanzania dropped out of this very lucrative market, other potential suppliers ignore the great chance to get unprecedented riches. Consumers around the world demand cheap, medium, and premium vanilla in inexpensive ice cream, biscuits, cakes, and puddings, while Bourbon Vanilla is essential for Bourbon and Kentucky Whiskey. Vanilla only grows in certain countries and specific locations.
Vanilla is an orchid that needs a partner to grow around as its support system. To mature it takes three years and the harvest can begin. During the growing period, it falls deeply in love with the cocoa tree. Using it as its support system, both plants in the soil exchange nutrients, which helps to boost each other’s fruitfulness and makes them more resistant to diseases. Alley and forest cocoa farming and seeing weeds as a helping hand for healthy plants eliminates the need for chemicals, artificial fertilizers, and pesticides; organically grown cocoa beans that fetch the highest prices on the international market.
Ghanaian farmers and Ghana COCOBOD nevertheless use the one-way road of the dead-end street leading nowhere but into poverty for Ghana’s 800,000 cocoa farmers constantly struggling to make ends meet.
Responsible managers of the Ghana cocoa strategy ignore with open eyes the magnificent opportunities of this sector for many cocoa farmers to build their modern houses, send their kids to school, have quality healthcare, travel the world, and employ house helpers who live in their boys’ quarters.
When the cocoa farmer looks after his farm, he can use the same time to look after the vanilla orchids. His time is well-used, and time is money. During the same time in the field, he makes extra money from vanilla, which has boosted his cocoa to reach the highest possible quality in good shape. The processing of dried vanilla and the most profitable avenues to industrial buyers is a know-how of its own but normal business for specific experts. The e.g. Whiskey or Food Industry needs the lowest quality and the highest quality constantly at the same level of quality and quantity. Modern technology known to the experts in this business ensures the demands of the various industries are met.
To access and use these technologies single farmers alone cannot afford the machinery nor use it profitably but as a collective of contract farmers have access to this machinery and benefit from the shared high price of vanilla on the international market. Clever marketing adds to the selling process and stimulates buyers to pay a bonus for the best quality on the market.
Ghanaians on the other hand complain about the price of cocoa, the exploitation of gold by the white man, galamsey and its dreadful implications while leaving the silver in the soil, the love their cocoa trees have for the vanilla orchid, untapped, sidelined…cocoa trees that shed tears at the open casket of the empty vanilla coffin…an unfulfilled love affair caused by the ignorance of human beings. Tragic…so tragic!
