One of those farmers is Agustinus, the leader of a small group of vanilla bean farmers in his village in Papua, an isolated province with Indonesia’s highest poverty rate. Here, most farmers only grow crops for their families to eat. “I want my village to move beyond subsistence,” he says.
After Agus harvests his beans, he sells them to a cooperative, where they are dried. Later, at a spice factory, Sam Filiaci, who oversees NCBA CLUSA’s work in Southeast Asia and serves as CBI’s Senior Vice President for the region, monitors operations to ensure that Agus’ harvest ends up in American grocery stores—as McCormick’s vanilla extract and Costco’s vanilla ice cream.
Filiaci thinks of vanilla and similar high-value crops as the tools that improve quality of life for farming communities. “They’re a tool to helping farmers educate their children, build their houses, get health care,” he said.
Learn more in a new video and photo essay from USAID: https://stories.usaid.gov/the-vanilla-connection/#page-1