Lets bring back some passion, heres something interesting that brought up by one of our agri thread reader
SourceQUOTE
Vanilla's sweet taste of profits
KOTA KINABALU: A project to help the hard-core poor could make Malaysia one of the leading producers of vanilla. Rentak Timur Sdn Bhd is teaming up with the Rural Development Corporation(KPD) under the Sabah Agriculture and Food Industries Ministry, to encourage poor farmers to cultivate vanilla orchid.
Rentak Timur Sdn Bhd chief executive officer Syed Isa Syed Alwi said the plant could be produced in large quantities on small plots of land. And it is a lucrative crop, selling for up to RM380 per kg on the international market.
With 60 per cent of the global share, Madagascar is the biggest producer of vanilla.
Malaysia produces high quality vanilla and can over take Indonesia, which as second largest producer has 21% of the world market share.
"Our goal is to plant five million vanilla seedlings in the country by 2009. As of April, we have 120,000 vanilla seedlings planted in Peninsular Malaysia and the figure will increase with the expansion to Sabah." said Syed Isa at the signing of the memorandum of understanding wigh KPD.
Rentak Timur, which has a RM14 million processing factory in Pahang, said it was the sole commercial producer of vanilla in the country. Under the joint project, KPD will identify hard-core poor farmer and bring them together with Rentak Timue, which will sell them the plants at RM14.50 per plant and buy back the crop.
"A quarter hectare can carry about 1000 vanilla plants. Each plant produces up to 5kg of vanilla pods, which we will buy back at RM30 to RM50 per kg for processing." said Syed Isa. Agriculture and Food Industries Minister Datuk Abdul Rahim Ismail said " We will identify which family qualify for the contract farming under the hard-core poor scheme KPD has identified 25ha in Lumadan, Beaufort as the site for the pilot project."
The US, France, Germany and the UK are the biggest consumers of vanilla in the world. World demand for vanilla flavouring is about 4,500 tonnes a year.
The economics provided here is:
QUOTE
1/2 acres for 1000 plants
crops take 3 years to grow(according to the website)
up to 5kg green pods per plant(assume they mean annual production)
buy back program for RM30-50 per kg
1000 plants = 5000kg annual production
5000kg x RM((30+50) / 2) = RM200,000 annual income
or RM16666.67 monthly
It might sound a little too good to be true here, take note that you have to bear with the labor cost, maintenance, wait 3 years for first fruiting, wait ?? years for it to hit 5kg per plant, etc etc.
But even if the net profit is 1/10 of the above figure, it is still worth considering.
Note: a green pod is fresh unprocessed vanilla pod, only the final product of properly cured and dried vanilla beans has the vanilla favor and will fetch the price of RM380.
WIKIQUOTE
Vanilla grows as a vine, climbing up an existing tree, pole, or other support. It can be grown in a wood (on trees), in a plantation (on trees or poles), or in a "shader", in increasing orders of productivity. Left alone, it will grow as high as possible on the support, with few flowers. Every year, growers fold the higher parts of the plant downwards so that the plant stays at heights accessible by a standing human. This also greatly stimulates flowering.
The distinctively flavoured compounds are found in the fruit, which results from the pollination of the flower. One flower produces one fruit. Vanilla planifolia flowers are hermaphroditic: they carry both male (anther) and female (stigma) organs; however, to avoid self-pollenization, a membrane separates those organs. Such flowers may only be naturally pollinated by a specifically equipped bee found in Mexico. Growers have tried to bring this bee into other growing locales, to no avail. The only way to produce fruits is thus artificial pollination.
A simple and efficient artificial pollination method was introduced in 1841 by a 12-year-old slave named Edmond Albius on Réunion: a method still used today. Using a beveled sliver of bamboo,[2] an agricultural worker folds back the membrane separating the anther and the stigma, then presses the anther on the stigma. The flower is then self-pollinated, and will produce a fruit. The vanilla flower lasts about one day, sometimes less, thus growers have to inspect their plantations every day for open flowers, a labour-intensive task.
The fruit (a seed capsule), if left on the plant, will ripen and open at the end; it will then release the distinctive vanilla smell. The fruit contains tiny, flavourless seeds. In dishes prepared with whole natural vanilla, these seeds are recognizable as black specks.
Like other orchids' seeds, vanilla seed will not germinate without the presence of certain mycorrhizal fungi. Instead, growers reproduce the plant by cutting: they remove sections of the vine with six or more leaf nodes, a root opposite each leaf. The two lower leaves are removed, and this area is buried in loose soil at the base of a support. The remaining upper roots will cling to the support, and often grow down into the soil. Growth is rapid under good conditions.
According to the
Malaysia Vanilla website, in order to get vanilla orchid to produce vanilla pods, plenty of labor is required for pollination, and it takes 9 months for the plant to form the pods. After harvesting the green pods, we need to go thru the following steps into sellable vanilla beans, which has the legendary vanilla flavor.
» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «
1. Harvest
The pods are harvested while green and immature. At this stage, they are odourless.
2. Killing
The vegetative tissue of the vanilla pod is killed to prevent further growing. The method of killing varies, but may be accomplished by sun killing, oven killing, hot water killing, killing by scratching, or killing by freezing.
3. Sweating
The pods are held for 7 to 10 days under hot (45º-65ºC or 115º-150ºF) and humid conditions; pods are often placed into fabric covered boxes immediately after boiling. This allows enzymes to process the compounds in the pods into vanillin and other compounds important to the final vanilla flavour.
4. Drying
To prevent rotting and to lock the aroma in the pods, the pods are dried. Often, pods are laid out in the sun during the mornings and returned to their boxes in the afternoons. When 25-30% of the pods' weight is moisture (as opposed to the 60-70% they began drying with) they have completed the curing process and will exhibit their fullest aromatic qualities.
5. Grading
Once fully cured, the vanilla is sorted by quality and graded.
Rentak Timur only required you to have 1/2 an acre for the buy back partnetship and a mere RM21k for setting up the land, it looks like an ideal crop for people who has a piece of idle land nearby where they live.
(PS: Vanilla Coke is made of natural vanilla? not synthetic?)
(A hat-tip to amirbashah!)This post has been edited by rexis: Feb 14 2008, 04:02 PM 
Feb 13 2008, 08:30 PM
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