Our Love Of 'All-Natural' Is Causing A Vanilla Shortage

Gerry Newman buys vanilla by the gallon. He's co-owner of Albemarle Baking Company, in Charlottesville, Va., and vanilla goes into everything from his cookies to pastry cream.

A few years ago, each one-gallon bottle of organic, fair-trade vanilla set him back $64. Today, it's $245, more than Newman can comfortably stomach. It's a global phenomenon, hitting pastry chefs and ice cream makers alike. Some have changed their recipes, to use less vanilla. Newman has switched suppliers to find a cheaper "It's not certified organic. It's not fair-trade," he says. "There's a guilt I have over that, because we're talking about something that's all hand labor, and if these people aren't being treated fairly, it's really sad." To understand the current vanilla crisis, this is the first thing to understand: It's one of the most labor-intensive foods on Earth. Vanilla beans are the seeds of an orchid. It grows wild in Mexico, where its flowers are pollinated by birds and insects. Most of the world's vanilla now is grown in Madagascar, though, where those native pollinators don't exist. So it has to be done by hand. "Every flower of this orchid has to be fertilized by hand, with a little stick," says Jürg Brand, who runs a small vanilla business in Madagascar called .