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One Island Grows 80% of the World’s Vanilla

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Re: One Island Grows 80% of the World’s Vanilla

#41

Post by lostlogin »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #30
mc32 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted, I guess I should have asked in the past tense? Why didn’t they? And why don’t local bees work in pollinating the vanilla vines?

It is quite surprising this hasn’t happened yet, what with all the other bad ecological decisions that get made in the furtherance of industrial farming. Not that I don’t like vanilla or food or anything. I’m just surprised, it seems kind of an obvious business move. Maybe the bees wouldn’t survive?

Or seems that a specific variety of bee is required.

https://agrieducate.com.au/farming-fact-sheets/vanilla/

Re: One Island Grows 80% of the World’s Vanilla

#42

Post by matthewwiese »

AKifer wrote: post #8

And it's even grown only in 2 very specific regions in the north of the island (where most of the cocoa production also come from). There's still huge opportunities if you have enough money and appetite for adventure to start a trading or setting up a plantation. 1ha yields on average 300-400 kg of dried vanilla, a process that takes on average 6-8 months from manual pollination to end of drying. Madagascar is quite…

A "vanilla startup" is perhaps one of the most interesting ideas I've read in HN comments these past few weeks.

If I may ask, are you from Madagascar or an expat? This is all quite new information to me so I am fascinated to learn more. Are there any sources you would recommend?

Re: One Island Grows 80% of the World’s Vanilla

#45

Post by 0xcafecafe »

matthewwiese wrote: post #42
AKifer wrote: post #8

And it's even grown only in 2 very specific regions in the north of the island (where most of the cocoa production also come from). There's still huge opportunities if you have enough money and appetite for adventure to start a trading or setting up a plantation. 1ha yields on average 300-400 kg of dried vanilla, a process that takes on average 6-8 months from manual pollination to end of drying. Madagascar is quite…

A "vanilla startup" is perhaps one of the most interesting ideas I've read in HN comments these past few weeks. If I may ask, are you from Madagascar or an expat? This is all quite new information to me so I am fascinated to learn more. Are there any sources you would recommend?

One a side note, I thought of a joke where his "vanilla startup" would be far from a "vanilla" startup. And that got me curious as to why the adjective vanilla refers to anything plain.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vanilla

"For lexicographers, vanilla has more flavor than chocolate, because it adds a tasty synonym for plain to the English menu. The noun vanilla was first served up in 1662, but it took almost 200 years for its adjective use to become established for things, like ice and sugar, flavored with vanilla. By the 1970s vanilla was perceived as being the plain flavor of the ice-cream world, and people began using the word itself to describe anything plain, ordinary, or conventional."

Re: One Island Grows 80% of the World’s Vanilla

#46

Post by pstuart »

AKifer wrote: post #8

And it's even grown only in 2 very specific regions in the north of the island (where most of the cocoa production also come from). There's still huge opportunities if you have enough money and appetite for adventure to start a trading or setting up a plantation. 1ha yields on average 300-400 kg of dried vanilla, a process that takes on average 6-8 months from manual pollination to end of drying. Madagascar is quite…

Hawaii has a producer: http://www.hawaiianvanilla.com/

Re: One Island Grows 80% of the World’s Vanilla

#48

Post by hotdog97 »

metiscus wrote: post #39
hotdog97 wrote: post #7

So, I assume everyone else's first thought after reading this was: Let's build a vanilla flower pollination robot using deep learning to process RGB camera images and help guide the robot actuators. Startup, anyone? Edit: turns out this is, in fact, not a unique thought: "Implementation of Automated Vanilla Pollination Robotic Crane Prototype, 2017": https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1109/SYSOSE.2017.79949... (No…

I think if you could work a blockchain in there somewhere you might have an idea worth funding. ;)

Well obviously you would need a blockchain to track the investments. Each vanilla pod would have an entry in the vanilla blockchain. And also an IPv6 address.

Seems like there already was something called Vanilla Coin (VNL), since rebranded/failed.

Re: One Island Grows 80% of the World’s Vanilla

#50

Post by toomanybeersies »

ryanworl wrote: post #3

A slightly more up-beat version: A single county in Pennsylvania grows 50% of the mushrooms in the United States. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/this-small-pennsylvania-...

Another interesting geographically focused product is rhubarb and the 9 square mile Rhubarb Triangle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb_Triangle

At one point they grew 90% of the worlds forced rhubarb (a special kind of rhubarb grown indoors).

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