Bali struggles to promote vanilla plant cultivation

Despite its huge economic potential, cultivating vanilla plants is not popular as consumers prefer to buy synthetic products, an official says.

Made Sudhiarta, head of Bali Plantation Agency, said Bali has 4,500 hectares of fertile land suitable for growing vanilla, but local farmers do not want to grow it because of its price as declined in international markets.

“In 2004, the price of vanilla beans reached around Rp 3 million [US$310] per kilogram and the commodity was exported to the United States, European countries and other regions,” said Sudhiartha.

Vanilla beans are among the island’s top export commodities along with coffee, cacao and cloves. Bali exported 11.6 tons of coffee worth $126,584 to be sold on the international market in the January-November 2010 period.

Balinese coffee, either in the form of grains or processed products, is exported to Japan, France and several European countries.

Bali produced 13,800 tons of coffee in 2009 but production was expected to decline in 2010 due to the extended rainy season, with rain falling almost throughout the year.

However, the value decreased 11.70 percent from the same period in the previous year, which reached $143,359, a spokesman for the Bali province administration, I Ketut Teneng, noted.

“Meanwhile, the volume of coffee exports decreased 56.4 percent because in the previous year we shipped 26.8 tons of the commodity,” he said.

Because of the lucrative export business, many local exporters had attempted to deceive overseas buyers by injecting mercury, sand and other material into vanilla beans to increase the weight. This underhanded practice dragged down the price of vanilla to its lowest level to only Rp 50,000 ($5) to Rp 100,000 ($10) per kilogram since 2005 up to the present time.

Sudhiarta added that many Balinese exporters procured vanilla from farmers across Indonesia.

Currently, vanilla farms on Bali cover only 806 hectares of land with an annual production of only 30 tons.

“We have tried to persuade local farmers to grow vanilla plants, but many of them have rejected the advice, saying it is too complicated and economically unfeasible.”

The plantation agency, he said, has established close cooperation with Udayana University’s School of Agriculture to develop biopesticide to eliminate various diseases that attack vanilla plants.

Dewa Ngurah Suparta, a professor of agriculture at Udayana University, said he and his team had tried to develop high-quality vanilla beans.

The professor said he was optimistic that the golden age for vanilla plants would soon return to Bali.

Gede Darmaja, head of the trade and industry office, said vanilla exports reached $760,353, or 0.17 percent of Bali’s total exports.