Jun 12, 2025

What brings short-term relief for distributors and customers is placing a heavy burden on smallholder families. Ever since the Madagascan government suspended the minimum export price for vanilla, the purchase prices have fallen sharply. Many producer families are now facing huge challenges. While most were able to significantly improve their living conditions during the high-price phase, they have now been forced to drastically reduce their spending again. Without an adequate, stable income, it is difficult for small farmers to secure their livelihoods.

What is more, Cyclone Gamane in March 2024 made the situation worse. It caused significant damage to a number of vanilla plantations in the north of the island, leading to crop failures, while also destroying important transport and supply routes. Thanks to sufficient stock levels, we have been able to supply the agreed quantities without any issues and remain flexible enough to continue sourcing organic vanilla from Madagascar even after the season has ended.

On the whole, the vanilla market in Madagascar is volatile and fraught with risk. This is due in part to fraudulent activities: when vanilla products are sold at unusually low prices, there is a real possibility that illegal practices such as fraud, money laundering or corruption are behind them. Unfortunately, these practices are still no exception today, even though they are rarely discussed openly.

In this kind of environment, honest and transparent market players run the risk of being disadvantaged. However, integrity and fairness continue to be a top priority at PRONATEC. With our many years of experience as well as local personal contact, we remain fully committed to this challenging sector – for a sustainable, reliable supply chain.

Together with PREMIUM SPICES, our long-standing spice and vanilla partner in Madagascar, we attach particular importance to long-term partnerships with the cooperatives. We believe it is essential to operate sustainably, and we want to continue paying fair prices to Madagascan families for their goods, so that they can cover all their costs and send their children to school.

Education was also at the heart of our 2024 Christmas donation. The funds make it possible to expand a primary school building in Ambohimitsinjo, located in north-east Madagascar and serving one of the PREMIUM SPICES partner cooperatives. We’re delighted to see the extension making great progress.

The harvest season began in Madagascar’s Ambanja region at the end of May 2025. Around four to six weeks later, the harvest will begin in the main crop regions of Mananara and Sambava, where our cooperatives are also active. The yield forecasts are promising – provided that there are no short-term extreme weather conditions such as a prolonged drought or heavy rainfall. It is currently unclear whether government interventions will once again limit the number of authorised exporters or influence prices in 2025. On the whole, we are expecting larger export volumes than in previous years.

The implementation of new regulations from the EU poses additional organisational and administrative challenges to the Madagascan smallholder cooperatives, entailing considerable financial and personnel burdens. In order to ensure compliance with the new regulations, our partner PREMIUM SPICES provides extensive, proactive support to the producer families – through targeted training, individual consultation services and financial aid. PREMIUM SPICES assumes full responsibility for recording and documenting the cultivable land, the internal checks as well as the certification within the cooperatives – for both organic and fair trade operations. We are in close contact with PREMIUM SPICES and monitor all developments from Switzerland, so that we can respond quickly.

Since last year, larger quantities of vanilla pods have been transported to Europe again by means of container ship. Due to ongoing safety risks posed by piracy around the Horn of Africa and in the Indian Ocean, we are consciously looking for alternative, safer routes. Although these diversions extend the transport time at sea to up to 90 days, we believe it is a necessary measure to ensure that the availability of the product is maintained.

Bourbon vanilla, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, turmeric and cocoa in organic and fair trade quality are important sources of income for the smallholder families of Madagascar. PRONATEC has been working for around 20 years with its local partner, PREMIUM SPICES, and with a total of five cooperatives in Madagascar.