# Where does vanilla come from?

Source: Commodity Origins, https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/vanilla/ — data JSON: https://commodityorigins.com/data/commodities/vanilla.json — license CC BY 4.0 (upstream data keeps its license; see Sources below).

Vanilla comes mainly from Madagascar, which produced 3,090 tonnes in 2024, 43% of the world's 7,115 tonnes (FAOSTAT). Indonesia (21%), Mexico (7.2%) and Papua New Guinea (6.9%) follow; the top five together supply 85%. The biggest exporter of vanilla (HS 0905) is Madagascar (60% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Vanilla is a climbing orchid whose natural pollinators live only in the Americas, so everywhere else every flower must be pollinated by hand, and the crop settled in tropical islands where labor was abundant and colonial shipping routes already ran.

*The cured seed pod of a climbing orchid, hand-pollinated and cured over months; the second most expensive spice.* Also called: vanilla beans, vanilla pods, bourbon vanilla.

## Where does vanilla come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Madagascar | 3,090 | 43% |
| 2 | Indonesia | 1,526 | 21% |
| 3 | Mexico | 510 | 7.2% |
| 4 | Papua New Guinea | 493 | 6.9% |
| 5 | China | 435 | 6.1% |
| 6 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 407 | 5.7% |
| 7 | Comoros | 203 | 2.9% |
| 8 | Tonga | 195 | 2.7% |
| 9 | Uganda | 183 | 2.6% |
| 10 | French Polynesia | 24.4 | 0.3% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 0.7% |
| | World | 7,115 | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Madagascar produced 3,090 tonnes, 43% of the world's 7,115 tonnes (FAOSTAT). Indonesia followed with 21%, then Mexico (7.2%), Papua New Guinea (6.9%) and China (6.1%). The top five account for 85%, 15 countries reported output and 0.7% came from outside the top ten. World production changed -3% over the ten years to 2024 and -1% on the previous year.

The world crop is measured in thousands of tonnes, not millions, which makes vanilla one of the smallest commodities on this site by weight and one of the largest by value per kilogram. Most vanilla flavor is not this crop at all: it is synthetic vanillin, made from wood lignin or petrochemical guaiacol.

Madagascar's crop is concentrated in the SAVA region on the northeast coast, around Sambava, Antalaha, Vohemar and Andapa. Indonesia grows a large crop cured to a different standard and sold mostly for extraction. Mexico is the plant's botanical home, and Uganda and Papua New Guinea have added supply. That concentration in a cyclone corridor is the market's basic fragility.


## Who exports and imports vanilla?

### Exporters of vanilla (HS 0905), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Madagascar | $278.5 million | 60% |
| 2 | France | $34.9 million | 7.6% |
| 3 | Uganda | $21.3 million | 4.6% |
| 4 | Germany | $17 million | 3.7% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $16.8 million | 3.6% |
| 6 | Indonesia | $14.3 million | 3.1% |
| 7 | Canada | $12.6 million | 2.7% |
| 8 | United States | $8.9 million | 1.9% |
| 9 | Papua New Guinea | $7.2 million | 1.6% |
| 10 | French Polynesia | $5.6 million | 1.2% |
| 11 | Poland | $4.7 million | 1% |
| 12 | United Kingdom | $3.4 million | 0.7% |
| 13 | Switzerland | $3.1 million | 0.7% |
| 14 | India | $2.6 million | 0.6% |
| 15 | Mauritius | $2.6 million | 0.6% |

### Importers of vanilla (HS 0905), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $138.9 million | 30% |
| 2 | France | $119.8 million | 26% |
| 3 | Germany | $38.1 million | 8.3% |
| 4 | Canada | $29.2 million | 6.3% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $21.5 million | 4.6% |
| 6 | Switzerland | $10.2 million | 2.2% |
| 7 | Italy | $9.3 million | 2% |
| 8 | Japan | $9.1 million | 2% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $8.8 million | 1.9% |
| 10 | Denmark | $8 million | 1.7% |
| 11 | Poland | $5.5 million | 1.2% |
| 12 | Australia | $4.5 million | 1% |
| 13 | Belgium | $4.3 million | 0.9% |
| 14 | Austria | $3.9 million | 0.8% |
| 15 | South Korea | $3.2 million | 0.7% |

Source: CEPII BACI international trade database (HS22, V202601).

Madagascar was the largest exporter of vanilla (HS 0905) in 2024 with 60% of world export value, ahead of France (7.6%), on world trade of $461.8 million (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 30%.

Madagascar's share of export value runs well ahead of its share of production because it cures and sells nearly all of its beans as high-grade whole vanilla, while other origins sell into cheaper extraction channels or consume at home. The gap is a quality and grading gap, not a volume one.

The buyers are flavor houses and extractors rather than food companies, which is why France sits so high in the import table and why France appears as an exporter. They import cured beans, extract them, and export flavor rather than pods.


## What does vanilla cost?

### How it is priced

There is no futures market for vanilla and no free public benchmark price, so this site quotes none. Beans are sold per kilogram under negotiated contracts between Malagasy exporters and importers or flavor houses, priced on grade: bean length, moisture, appearance, flexibility and vanillin content. Private trade circulars and importers' market letters are the only visible references.

Madagascar's government has intervened directly, setting minimum export prices by decree, licensing exporters and requiring proceeds to be repatriated, then loosening those rules when unsold stocks built up. Grade dispersion is extreme: a long, supple, high-vanillin gourmet bean and a short, split, early-picked bean are the same crop at very different prices.


## What moves the price of vanilla?

### Cyclones in Madagascar

The SAVA region sits in the southwest Indian Ocean cyclone track. A landfall during flowering or bean fill destroys the season and damages the vines and shade trees that carry the next several seasons, so one storm affects years of supply rather than one harvest.

### Synthetic vanillin

Most vanilla flavor is synthetic, made from lignin or guaiacol at a small fraction of the cost of cured beans. When bean prices rise, manufacturers reformulate toward synthetic or fermentation-derived vanillin, and they do not always switch back, which caps how far and how long bean prices can hold.

### Theft and early picking

Beans are valuable enough per kilogram to be stolen off the vine, so growers guard plots at night and often pick before maturity. Immature beans cure poorly and yield less vanillin, so a security problem shows up months later as a quality problem across a whole season's crop.

### The planting lag

A vanilla vine takes about three years from cutting to first flowering. Vines planted in response to a high price bear only after that price has passed, so supply arrives late and in waves, and gluts follow shortages with a lag no grower can trade around.

### Export rules and licensing

Madagascar has used minimum export prices, export licensing and currency repatriation requirements to manage the trade. Those rules decide who can ship and when beans move, so a policy change can hold a crop in the country or release it, independently of what the harvest was.

## How is vanilla produced?

Vanilla planifolia is a climbing orchid grown on living support trees under partial shade, propagated from cuttings rather than seed and flowering from about its third year. Each flower opens for less than a day, and outside the Americas no insect pollinates it, so a worker must lift the flap between anther and stigma by hand and press them together.

Green pods develop on the vine for eight to nine months. They are picked one at a time as the tip begins to yellow, which means walking the plot repeatedly rather than harvesting in one pass, and the picking decision is where quality is won or lost.

Curing then takes months. Beans are killed in hot water or by sun or oven heat, sweated in insulated boxes overnight and sunned by day for weeks, slow-dried, and finally conditioned in closed boxes while the aroma develops. Vanillin is released from a glucoside during curing, and roughly five parts of green bean give one part cured. Beans are graded last, by length, moisture and appearance.


## What is vanilla used for?

Cured beans are sold whole to bakers and premium manufacturers, or extracted with ethanol and water into extract, paste and powder for ice cream, bakery, confectionery, dairy, beverages and perfumery. In the United States a legal standard of identity sets a minimum bean content per gallon and a minimum alcohol content for anything labeled vanilla extract, which is why "vanilla flavor" and "vanilla extract" are different products.

By-products matter at these prices. Spent beans left after extraction are dried and ground into vanilla powder or sold as decorative exhausted pods, and the seeds are recovered separately to give the visible specks that premium products are sold on.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The farm end is smallholder. Growers with small shaded plots pollinate by hand, pick bean by bean and usually sell green beans to collectors. Curing is done by collectors and exporters in the SAVA towns, so the step that creates most of the value sits above the grower rather than with him.

Cured beans leave through Antalaha, Sambava and Toamasina in ordinary containers, because once cured they are stable and need no cold chain. The buying side is concentrated in a small number of flavor houses and extractors in France, the United States and Germany, which hold both the contracts and the extraction plants.

The chokepoints are the cyclone exposure of one region, the security of stored beans, and a cheap industrial substitute for the entire product. None is a logistics problem, and none responds quickly to price.


## Timeline

- 1836: A vanilla flower is artificially pollinated for the first time on record. Deliberate pollination in a European botanical garden showed that the orchid could set pods away from its native pollinators, which made cultivation outside the Americas conceivable. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11598392/)
- 1841: Hand pollination is made practical on Réunion. A simple, teachable technique turned pollination into routine plantation labor and spread cultivation across the Indian Ocean to the Comoros, Seychelles and Madagascar. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11598392/)
- 1874: Vanillin is synthesized from coniferin. The first industrial synthetic aroma chemical gave food manufacturers a cheap substitute for cured beans, and it has capped the bean market ever since. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12131681/)
- 2017-03: Cyclone Enawo strikes the SAVA vanilla region. A category-four landfall between Sambava and Antalaha hit the heart of the growing area, damaging vines and shade trees and cutting supply for several seasons. (https://floodlist.com/africa/madagascar-cyclone-enawo-landfall-march-2017)
- 2020-07: Madagascar sets a minimum export price for cured vanilla. A price floor enforced through export licensing tried to hold up returns after a boom, and instead left beans unsold in the country as buyers waited. (https://www.mintecglobal.com/top-stories/madagascar-lifts-minimum-export-price-on-vanilla)
- 2023: Madagascar lifts the minimum export price. With stocks accumulated at farmer and collector level, the floor was replaced by a looser cost-price rule, showing how far policy rather than harvest can govern when vanilla moves. (https://www.mintecglobal.com/top-stories/madagascar-lifts-minimum-export-price-on-vanilla)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most vanilla

Madagascar produced 3,090 tonnes in 2024, 43% of the world's 7,115 tonnes (FAOSTAT). Indonesia was second with 21%. Madagascar's lead is larger still in export value, where it took 60% of world trade in 2024 (CEPII BACI), because it cures and sells nearly all of its beans as high-grade whole vanilla rather than as extraction stock.

### why is vanilla so expensive

Because every flower is pollinated by hand, opens for less than a day, and produces a pod that takes eight to nine months to mature and months more to cure. Roughly five parts of green bean give one part cured. The labor cannot be mechanized, and the crop is concentrated in a cyclone-prone region.

### why does vanilla have to be pollinated by hand

Because the bees that pollinate Vanilla planifolia are native to tropical America and absent from Africa and Asia. Outside that range the orchid flowers but sets almost no pods on its own, so a worker lifts the flap separating the flower's parts and presses them together, flower by flower.

### what is the difference between vanilla extract and vanillin

Vanilla extract is made by soaking cured beans in ethanol and water; in the United States a standard of identity sets a minimum bean content per gallon and a minimum alcohol content. Vanillin is a single molecule, usually synthesized from wood lignin or guaiacol, and it costs a small fraction of extract.

### how long does it take to cure vanilla beans

Months. Green pods are killed with heat, sweated in insulated boxes overnight and sunned by day for weeks, slow-dried, then conditioned in closed boxes while the aroma develops. Curing is what releases vanillin from its glucoside, and beans picked too early never develop full flavor however carefully they are cured.

### why do vanilla prices swing so much

Because supply is concentrated in one cyclone-exposed region, vines take about three years to bear, and a cheap synthetic substitute limits how long high prices last. Madagascar's export licensing and minimum-price rules add a further swing, holding beans in the country or releasing them regardless of harvest size.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- CEPII BACI international trade database (HS22, V202601), BACI HS22 V202601, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Etalab Open Licence 2.0. https://www.cepii.fr/CEPII/en/bdd_modele/bdd_modele_item.asp?id=37

Text last reviewed 2026-09-05. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where does vanilla come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/vanilla/.