Did you know that global warming is endangering the most popular kitchen spice of them all? What would cookies and cakes be like with no vanilla? Personally, I don’t want to find out. Each year, over 60 tons of vanilla are sold globally, mostly in the United States. Vanilla comes from the vanilla bean, the fruit of the orchid Vanilla planifolia. While a native of Mexico, most of the world's commercial vanilla is grown in Madagascar, where the flowers must be hand-pollinated, since no native pollinators live on this island east of Africa.
It takes 300 hand pollinated orchid blossoms to get one pound of dried vanilla beans. But due to climate change, the island of Madagascar as well as Mexico, has been seeing more—and more intense—weather. Hurricanes, or cyclones in some parts of the world, are intensifying. And the last two decades have been filled with cyclones and tropical storms damaging farms and production. 2024 was particularly detrimental. Torrential rain and high winds flooded fields and stripped many vanilla pods from their vines in Madagascar’s key vanilla-growing regions.
According to George Geeraerts, president of Madagascar’s vanilla exporters, the vanilla harvest could be cut in half. Vanilla is already the second-most expensive spice—after saffron—and this will not lower the cost. What’s a cook to do? There’s always imitation vanilla, though it doesn’t have the broad flavor profile of the real thing. It also doesn’t have the medicinal, anti-microbial or cancer fighting properties of natural vanilla, which may be worth more money. In addition, by consuming natural vanilla, it helps small, local producers maintain their livelihood.
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