"Bob Murphy... executive at Pennsylvania-based Shank's Extracts, one of the... suppliers of vanilla to American households.
A few years ago, Uganda... emerged as... the world's highest-quality supplier of vanilla beans. Prices soared because of a crop failure in Madagascar, traditionally the vanilla king. Ugandans filled the breach, reaping large revenue increases from 2002 to 2004. At the peak of the boom in 2003, cured vanilla beans sold for about $200 a pound, 20 times the historical rate. More than 100,000 farmers in Uganda now grow vanilla, producing two crops a year to Madagascar's one. Almost all of those farmers tend plots of just an acre or less... When the beans appear, the farmers hire security guards to protect them from theft... Six years ago Phillip Betts... set up an operation that cures and exports the finished beans from a processing plant about an hour outside Kampala. ... Betts... says he's the second-largest exporter of vanilla to America. Ugandan vanilla beans these days fetch $12 to $15 a pound" article URL : http://biz.yahoo.com/hbusn/061002/081706_8384353.html?.v=1 ******** Regards, VB _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) orchids@orchidguide.com http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
