Costa Rican Vanilla

After a week in Mexico, the birthplace of vanilla, Aaron and I headed down to Costa Rica for another week of learning about vanilla and finding potential ties and partnerships. Starting in the 1980s, Costa Rica has been growing vanilla in small quantities with farmers in touristy areas of the country (who end up selling vanilla locally, not in large quantities on international markets). We hooked up with Professor Amelia Paniagua at the National University near the capital of Costa Rica to learn more about the work being done there to promote vanilla.

Looking at some native vanilla vines with Amelia and Gaby

Vanilla is endemic to Mexico and Central America, and in the 1980s some government programs in Costa Rica helped establish vanilla plantations in the south with agricultural extension agent support. Researchers began looking in the forests and documented new varieties of vanilla, a new supply chain was being born. In the 1990s, with a new government, support for vanilla production evaporated, and producers were left on their own when the agricultural extension agents were taken away. For ten years or so, small-scale vanilla production was negligible.

In the 2000s, Amelia, a forestry scientist, and some other researchers received funding to start a vanilla project, and momentum behind vanilla production in Costa Rica was born anew. New people in different regions of the country were trained on how to grow vanilla, a new association to support vanilla production was formed with researchers, producers, and scientists making up the membership, and the goal of setting up a processing plant to get Costa Rican vanilla into the international market was born.

Costa Rica has had a lot of challenges with vanilla - one of the biggest being that the type of vanilla that grows best in Costa Rica is a hybrid of two different types of vanilla, and this hybrid is legally not recognized as vanilla in the USA. What does that mean? According to an administrative law set by the FDA, there are only two types of vanilla that legally count - vanilla planifolia (dominant in world market, from Mexico, Madagascar, etc.) and vanilla tahitenses (from Tahiti). Any other types of vanilla (like pompona or the Costa Rican hybrid) cannot be sold in bulk quantities in the USA (small sales to tourists who take it back are fine, but selling to Coca Cola, not so much). Unfortunately for Costa Rica, vanilla planifolia is essentially extinct, all Costa Rican vanilla is a hybrid that grows exceptionally well. 

Another challenge in Costa Rica is volume. There are maybe thirty or forty producers of vanilla in all of Costa Rica and many of them have only a couple hundred plants (unlike the thousands of plants in Mexican small-farms), so getting volume to a level where a national processing plant could do good business will also be a challenge. 

Speaking to Amelia and some other leaders in the vanilla association showed us some of the issues that come with attempting to start a new supply chain, and made us think about how important financing and scale will be for a supply chain to make economic sense in Nicaragua. Meanwhile, we also wanted to actually see what this hybrid vanilla looked like, it was time for a farm visit.

One day we took Gaby with us to visit the largest vanilla producer in Costa Rica, Cinco Ramas. Cinco Ramas is a huge organic farm with vanilla, pepper, chile, and turmeric grown under 9 Hectares of greenhouse canopy. The American owners of Cinco Ramas bought the property with the greenhouse already fabricated from the Dutch government after they shut down a development project in the region. The farm came with tons of vanilla vines, and the couple set to work making it productive, diversifying with other crops over the years.

Greenhouse cover for turmeric and tabasco chiles

Our guide and owner of the farm, Geri, was very open about the challenges growing vanilla - good years interspersed with bad due to climate change, steep learning curve for growing vanilla, and high costs for production - and we got to see what a hybrid vanilla plant looked like. 

Hybrid Costa Rican Vanilla - thicker vine and bigger leaves than vanilla planifolia

Hybrid vanilla fruit - much larger than fruit on vanilla planifolia some grow to be over to 22 cm. long

Thoroughly sweaty with Geri post-tour

At the end of the trip, we learned about a distinct vanilla experience in Costa Rica, and while the news was not as encouraging as what we learned in Mexico, meeting people involved in vanilla in Costa Rica was very valuable and will hopefully lead to some partnerships in the future. Now it is back to the drawing board to figure out what's next with Doselva!

With Gaby on a hike in a much cooler part of Costa Rica

Mexican Vanilla

It has been a while since I last wrote a blog post, sorry! In the past two weeks, Aaron, Jefferson, and I have done a lot of travel - not only for Aaron and I to renew our visas (every three months), but also to learn more about vanilla and the feasibility  of our getting a new value chain started in Nicaragua. Our first trip was to Veracruz, Mexico - the cradle of vanilla. This blog recounts our visit in a lot of detail, so feel free to skim and look at photos. I realize that I also may not have ever explained what the vanilla process is like, so some things might not make a ton of sense. Here is a little summary about vanilla, and here is a little something about Mexican vanilla.

We flew to Mexico the week before Day of the Dead, and along with our Costa Rican friend Gaby, drove out to northern Veracruz to learn about the history, production, and processing of vanilla in Mexico with our guide, Juan Hernandez Hernandez. Juan is an agricultural extension agent for a government ministry similar to the USDA or US Department of the Interior who Jefferson met a few years back at a vanilla conference. While Juan originally researched jalapeño chiles, 19 years ago he was asked to take over vanilla research when a colleague went to university and has never looked back. He has literally written the handbook on vanilla and has helped people start vanilla plantations both in Mexico and in other countries. Our first day with Juan, we sat in a dark room all day and learned everything there is to know about vanilla....maybe not everything, but ten-hours worth. If you are interested, I found a little video that summarizes some of what we learned.  On our second day, Juan took our show on the road and we went out to meet people and their plants.

Our first stop was to see vanilla grown in a greenhouse, a method that we do not plan on using in Nicaragua since it does not support agroforestry systems. The men who showed us around their greenhouse were following their father into the family business, with a twist. Their father started growing vanilla on citrus trees fifty years back, and they built a greenhouse five years ago for more intense production. 

Gaby, greenhouse grower, and Jefferson in the greenhouse (all the leaves on the ground are mulch covering vanilla vines' roots)

The greenhouse was about a quarter of an acre with intense vine production. One thing that we noticed was that a lot of the vines did not have that many fruit on them (harvest is in December, so this time of year we should be seeing a lot of large fruit on the vines). We learned that a lot of the vanilla harvest was lost due to 'fruit abortion', which is when the fruit drops from the vine suddenly soon after pollination. This issue that has been affecting the region for the past few years due to climate change and it has happened a lot more in greenhouses, probably due to the higher temperatures in there (up to 90% of fruit aborted). The men we met shared their plans to build another greenhouse, and that currently they make a lot of their money off of selling cuttings of vanilla to other farmers and foreigners who want to start growing vanilla rather than the green vanilla itself.

 Having a Coke with the greenhouse vanilla growers, Gaby, and Juan (second from right) 

Our next stop was in a citrus grove, where vanilla is being grown on tutors (or smaller trees) under cover of citrus trees. This farm was run by an older gentleman, Don Pedro, who had started growing vanilla three or four years ago. His farm looked a lot closer to what we envision vanilla plantations will look like in Nicaragua - the farm has lower temperatures thanks to two levels of shade cover (vanilla requires 50% shade, so two levels of shade are recommended). His vines had also been affected by fruit abortion, but they had a lot more fruit than we had seen in the greenhouse probably due to lower temperatures on his farm.

Don Pedro and a vine with a lot of fruit

Don Pedro showing us how he guides vanilla vines back up the tutor with a piece of wood once they have grown long.

Don Pedro told us that anyone who wants to grow vanilla has to be ready to work since it requires a lot of care. Seeing his plants doing really well, and knowing that he is a newcomer to the crop, made us feel good about the possibility of getting new farmers started on vanilla in Nicaragua. 

After visiting the two farms, we went to one of the biggest vanilla processors in Mexico - Gaya (PR video, but you can get the vibe). Gaya was started by Italian immigrants in the 1800s (its current CEO is the fifth generation to lead this company) and is one of the five big processors of vanilla in Mexico. Gaya has two HUMONGOUS greenhouses with thousands of vines, some grown from in vitro processing at labs, all of which are organically certified. Gaya additionally buys green vanilla from a few hundred farmers, who grow conventionally mostly with other crops like citrus.

Organic vanilla grown in a MASSIVE greenhouse at Gaya

Gaya's processing facilities were huge and we learned a lot about the curing process, known as el beneficiado or beneficio in Spanish. The beneficiado is a months long process that requires a lot of investment in materials and space. Fruit that are harvested have to be killed (traditionally in Mexico in ovens, in Madagascar by dipping in hot water), and then put in the sun and sweated in wooden boxes for months to get properly cured (vanilla needs to reach a certain vanillin content and humidity level). There is a science to the process, along with intuition and know-how from experience, and it takes time and money to convert the green pods into tasty vanilla - hence the price tag when you buy real vanilla. 

After visiting Gaya, we spent the night in Papantla, home of vanilla, and enjoyed the public art dedicated to vanilla, the famous voladores of Papantla, and saw some day of the dead celebrations. 

The legend of vanilla

Watch the video, it's worth it

Day of the Dead celebration

On our third and final day touring vanilla in Mexico, we went to a smaller vanilla processing plant, where we got a more realistic perspective on what the vanilla processing industry is like (we spoke to the manager and head scientist, not a tour guide). Mexico's vanilla industry is well established, dominated by a few large players who can set prices, and has tons of small farmers who sell their green vanilla as soon as they can legally do so. In Mexico, there is a law that sets the date when vanilla can be picked to limit theft and harm to vanilla quality, and farmers have to invest in security and are threatened with robbery and even death during the harvest - this business is no joke.  We also visited a farm where a former vanilla farmer has let his land convert back to forest and is growing vanilla the traditional way the Totonacas did in ancient times. 

This farmer, Jose Luis, was possibly the happiest man I have ever met, and he shared his story with us while showing us his farm. After farming citrus for years, Jose Luis began growing vanilla as well until one day he decided he just didn't want to do it anymore. He cut down all of his citrus trees and vanilla vines and let them go wild. He discovered after a few years of neglect that vanilla in its natural state is like a weed, it grows everywhere, and unlike the vanilla grown on farms or in greenhouses, which require hand pollination, his vines get pollinated by insects - something that has been considered no longer possible. 

Jose Luis showing us his wild vanilla

Two bugs that pollinate vanilla - the smaller one pollinates vanilla planifolia (the type we consume), the larger one pollinates vanilla pompona (the type used for perfumes)

Along with allowing his vanilla vines to grow wild and get pollinated naturally, Jose Luis leaves the vanilla fruit on the vines for almost an entire year so that they self-cure, rather than cutting them down and processing them after eight or nine months of growth. He told us that his job is to be a gatherer, so he waits until the pods are self-cured and then harvests. While he gets way less vanilla than he used to when he farmed it, the vanilla pods that he gets from this plants are much larger and they get such a high concentration of vanillin from this natural process that crystals actually form on the vanilla pod. He's got quality and a traditional way of production, but no quantity to speak of.

A vanilla pod that was self-cured - Jose Luis does not need to 'kill' his vanilla pods or do any of the processing we observed at Gaya, he only lets them sit in the sun for a few days after harvesting and they are all set.

Jose Luis continues to let vanilla grow wild on his farm and hopes to get to a point where there is enough wild-produced vanilla to sell, in the meantime he depends on tourism. While his production method is not viable as a business in Nicaragua, it was really impressive to see what traditional vanilla growing looked like and how different its environment and processing is from the industry we saw in the previous days.

Gaby, Jose Luis, Aaron, me, and Juan with vanilla pompona all around us

Before heading back to Nicaragua, we made a final pit stop at an archaeological site - El Tajín. We did not get a tour guide, I have no idea what any of the buildings were originally used for or how they were rediscovered, but the site was beautiful and impressive - like Mexico. 

Aaron with pyramid

With Aaron, Jefferson, and a bunch of pyramids

Next to a carving on a ball court