Why Madagascar is the world's largest vanilla producer

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/13/why-madagascar-is-the-worlds-largest-vanilla-producer.html

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No surprise European Colonists involvement. Subjugate indigenous people, exploit their ancestrial lands while pocketing agricultural proceeds and improverishing the population.

Check and mate.

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I wouldn’t consider it just agricultural proceeds. The indigenous people in South America and Africa are being robbed of their medicinal technological rights by companies who patent the very plants that have been used for years, then try to sell the processed pills back to them at a huge mark-up and litigate any attempt by the people just to say “It’s right here on the ground! Just pick it up, mash it up, and make some tea!”.

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It’s a bit more complicated than that. Modern medicine doesn’t just “process” natural products, it uses science to figure out why things work and then makes versions that work better – often much, much better. There’s a reason that we don’t brew ourselves a cup of willow bark tea when we get a headache, even though that was the initial basis of NSAID painkillers like aspirin.

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True in that case (I don’t take NSAIDS for other reasons), but if some company comes along for some other (more rare ailment) and finds a plant-based solution, they shouldn’t have the right to tell the original producers that they need to cease production because a US company now has a patent.

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Amen to that!

Vanillin is what makes books, especially old ones, smell so good.

Manual Vanilla pollination is still known as “marrying the flowers.”

A long time ago, I was a member of the American Orchid Society. Their bulletin is a great publication. One issue contained a story about an old fashioned Greek ice cream made with salep - powdered Orchis tubers - the swollen underground roots of a few species of European terrestrial orchids.

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Another major component of pharma produced medicine is that you can be sure the dose in the pill is the advertised dose.

If you’re just picking the plant and consuming, you cannot be sure of the dose as it naturally varies.

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Vanilla isn’t the only product of a food producing orchid – Salep is another.

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My favorite thing about orchids (besides the flower) is that orchid means testicle in greece, as the tuber looks like one :smiley:

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Yup! :smiley: The pics in the Bulletin made me chuckle.

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And that’s why removing a testicle (due to cancer or other disorder) is called orchiectomy

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In my botanical studies, I saw various orchid-tribe flowers. The blossoms appear rather more vaginal than testicular. Go figure. BTW when we drove to Veracruz, orchids claimed to be grown locally were used to flavor cigars. Very tasty.

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…and cryptorchid refers to an undescended testicle.

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