Madagascar vanilla prices fall to a decade low
A record harvest of more than 4,500 tonnes pushes wholesale vanilla prices down to a fraction of their 2018 peak.
Madagascar vanilla prices have fallen to their lowest level in a decade, after growers brought in a record harvest estimated at more than 4,500 tonnes. Wholesale prices now sit between $6 and $24 a kilogram, a fraction of the $600 peak the market hit in 2018.
Madagascar supplies roughly three-quarters of the world's natural vanilla. The 2025-26 campaign confirms a national production record, driven by favourable weather and an expansion in planted area after years of growers chasing the previous decade's high prices.
Export controls and minimum-price rules, introduced to stop growers undercutting each other after past gluts, have limited how much of that harvest can leave the country at once. The measures have kept prices from falling even further, but have not been enough to hold them near recent norms.
The spice that once cost more than silver by weight is now closer to the price of a bulk grocery item.
A decade-long round trip
Vanilla is the second most expensive spice by weight after saffron, but its price has always swung harder than almost any other crop. A cyclone that destroyed much of Madagascar's crop in 2017 sent prices to $600 a kilogram within a year, prompting a wave of new planting across the island.
That planting is now paying off just as demand has cooled. Large buyers rebuilt their own stockpiles during the price spike, and with a big, cheap harvest now available, they have little reason to pay above spot prices.
The reversal echoes this year's collapse in Greek olive oil prices, another case where a strong harvest undid years of scarcity pricing almost overnight.
Who benefits, who doesn't
Pastry kitchens and ice cream makers who pay in dollars are the clearest winners, after years of rationing real vanilla or substituting synthetic vanillin. Farmers on the island face a harder trade-off: a bigger crop sold at a much lower price, with little guarantee that replanting for the next cycle will pay off before prices swing again.
Cocoa growers in Ghana are living through a comparable adjustment this season, on the opposite side of the price cycle. For vanilla, the question now is whether $15 to $25 a kilogram becomes the new baseline, or just the bottom of another swing.
