This year companies from Peru and Colombia joined forces in a collective Andean Ingredients pavilion at Hi Europe & Ni, the largest European exhibition for healthy and natural ingredients . For the first time visitors can find a range of innovative, functional and healthy ingredients from one of the world´s regions with the highest biodiversity. 

In total seven companies will present natural ingredient and healthy food solutions from products like maca, sacha inchi, goldenberry, lucuma, yacon, chia, quinoa and many more. An important objective of the Andean pavilion is to not only present innovative ingredients but also demonstrate how these ingredients can be used in the development of healthy food and beverage applications like snack bars, smoothies, bakery products and food supplements.

One of these innovative products is a cold pressed sacha inchi Seed oil from Agroindustrias Osho. Sacha Inchi, also known as Inca peanut, comes from the Peruvian jungle and its seeds are rich in protein, omega 3, 6, and 9, alpha tocopherol vitamin E, carotenoids (vitamin A), and fiber. The seed oil can be used in nutritional supplements, functional foods, pharmaceutical products and cosmetic application. Due to its slightly nutty flavour, this oil is ideal to use in salads and vegetables dishes.

The pavilion is supported by CBI (Centre for Promotion of Import from developing countries) in partnership with local trade promotion organisations such as PromPeru and ProColombia.

A visit to the Andean Ingredients pavilion will allow visitors to meet companies with these exciting new ingredients, advanced technology and sustainable business models. All companies have international business experience and at the same time contribute to economic, social and environmental development in their home markets.

The Centre for the Promotion of Imports contributes to sustainable economic development in developing countries through the expansion of export from these countries. CBI’s goals are to strengthen the international competitive capacity of exporters by developing the export-related knowledge and skills of entrepreneurs and by helping exporters enter the EU market. CBI also organise effective business support for both the private sector and public authorities. The Centre was founded in 1971 and is an agency of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For more information: www.cbi.eu

The following companies will be present themselves at Hi Europe:

–Villa Andina –Peru: a producer of organic ancient grains, dehydrated Peruvian fruits and a line of cocoa products

–Alsec S.A. Ingredientes – Colombia: a producer of nutritional mixes, extracts and spray dried lipids

–Algarrobos Organicos del Peru SAC – Peru: a producer of organic functional ingredients such as maca, mesquite, lucuma and cocoa

–Agroindustrias Osho – Peru: a producer of innovative protein and omega oils and flours, working with specialty oils and functional ingredients

–Alimentos Ekhus – Peru: A producer from the Peruvian highlands working with unique products like purple corn, mashua, okosh, golden berry and maca

–Cooperativa Agroindustrial Cabana – Peru: the largest ancient grain cooperative from Puno, working with quinoa, amaranth and other natural ingredients

–Ecoinca –Peru: a company with a range of organic and fair trade products such as quinoa, chia and different herbal infusions

–Insumos Mantaro: a production company with its own methodology of processing quinoa, maca and other Andean ingredients.  

 

 

Source : http://www.mynewsdesk.com/uk/cbi/pressreleases/increase-of-innovative-ingredients-from-the-andean-highlands-1628731

By Saumu Mwalimu (THE CITIZEN)

Dar es Salaam — Vanilla farming is less popular in Tanzania but farmers from regions like Kagera, Morogoro and Kilimanjaro have struck gold in its cultivation.

Dried vanilla beans are used in food, beverages and fragrances are sold at between Sh10,000 and Sh15,000 a kilo.

Companies such as Natural Extractive Industries (NEI) have been buying vanilla beans and processing them for exports.

The Arusha-based company has been working with more the 1,200 vanilla farmers in Moshi.

Ms Loveness Ndeshau, who started growing vanilla in 2000, has found the crop profitable.

She urges the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock Development as well as that of Industry, Trade and Investment to ensure vanilla cultivation and produce marketing are stressed.

World’s largest vanilla-growing countries are Indonesia, Mexico, Madagascar, the Comoros and Uganda, according to the 2013 worldatlas.com article.

Ms Ndeshau believes Tanzania can earn billions of dollars if the government promotes vanilla cultivation and invests adequately.

Ms Ndeshau was motivated to grow vanilla after reading a book titled ‘Lima Vanilla Upate Mafanikio (Grow Vanilla to Succeed)’, which she says its cover has pictures of money.

"Being a Mchagga, when I saw money on the cover I was attracted to read it. The book contains guidelines about vanilla farming and how one can become rich."

She planted 50 vanilla seedlings. Now the number has increased to 2,800. It takes up to three years for the plant to start producing beans.

Ms Ndeshau got her first harvest in 2003. That encouraged her to cultivate more vanilla. Though vanilla cultivation, she has constructed a modern house, bought a car and sent her two children to private English medium schools.

Her fellow villagers have taken to vanilla cultivation. Some 400 Uswaa and Mamba villagers in Moshi now grow the crop.

"When I depended on maize and bananas my first son had to go to a public school. But his two siblings are in private schools. Vanilla farming has also encouraged me to increase efforts in cultivating other crops. I have realised that when you work hard and follow instructions agriculture pays off." One of her sons also farms vanilla earns good money. "I train my children to cultivate the crop when they grow up," she said.

She has realised that demand for vanilla beans is higher than supply. So she trains her fellow villagers to grow the crop.

However, training fellow farmers is challenging since most of them are scattered. "But I have to do it. Through training others I also learn."

Since vanilla thrives under shade and in high humidity, serious problems are encountered during the dry season.

According to Mr Silas Noah, one of NEI shareholders, since middlemen are no longer involved in vanilla beans buying, farmers have been benefiting from their produce.

NEI has also been training farmers on vanilla cultivation. "Women groups have been formed and trained on vanilla farming."

He calls on extension officers to serve farmers diligently to increase agriculture production and productivity and link producers with buyers locally and internationally.

 

Source: http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/magazine/businessweek/1843772-3373488-55mnfpz/index.html

By Alawi Masare (THE CITIZEN)

Dar es Salaam — Tanzania has indicative prices for cotton, cashew nuts, and fuel but for cloves the pricing mechanism is different.

While the prices of fuel and the traditional crops are set by regulatory authorities, for cloves, the marketing body does it instead.

The spice – produced in Zanzibar – is one of the traditional exports but recently there have been reports of re-emergency of illegal exports.

However, producers desire the involvement in setting the indicative prices ahead of the harvesting season to increase transparency in pricing and probably end smuggling.

"We do not support smuggling as it does not benefit the producers and the society at large. It’s done by the middle men who seek quick cash profits," says Mr Abubakar Ali, the executive director of Zanzibar Cloves Producers Organization (ZACPO).

A kilogram of clove is currently sold at about Sh14,000 while organic clove attracts up to Sh20,000 per kilogram from Zanzibar State Trading Corporation (ZSTC).

Since the clove revival initiative started five years ago, smuggling of the cash crop out of the islands had almost declined. But there have of late been reports on the continuation of the illegal business.

The re-emerging illegal export of cloves from Zanzibar to a neighboring country has shocked the authorities with the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar ordering increased crackdown efforts.

However, Mr Ali says the issue could be tamed if the government increased transparency in marketing of cloves through indicative prices setting which involves stakeholders.

He also suggests removing some overhead cost like roadblocks and reducing burden to the producers.

Tanzania generated $46.2 million from clove exports in the year ending June 2016 compared with $30.6 million recorded during the previous year.

However, its price in the world market slightly declined during the year as there was a weak global demand for the product.

Zanzibar’s value of exported goods and services had improved by 23.6 per cent to $226.7 million in June 2016 compared with $183.4 million recorded in June 2015.

Notably, goods exports increased by 51.5 per cent to $67.9 million owing to good performance of cloves exports.

Zanzibar State Trade Corporation (ZSTC) was recently quoted by the media as saying that as of mid-June 2016 it had bought 5,745 tonnes of cloves from farmers surpassing the projection of 5,500 tonnes.

"From my knowledge as agriculture expert, all cloves in Zanzibar are organic except that some quality control issues be observed," he says.

The Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar has been maintaining that ZSTC gives the producers 80 per cent of the market prices of the cloves.

However, Mr Ali says the pricing system is not so transparent that farmers can know how much exactly they are supposed to earn.

ZSTC which is a public owned trading company, was established in 1968 and given the authority by the government to buy agricultural products such as cloves, copra, sea-shells, sea weds, chilies and selling such items abroad. Other related items it deals with include essential oils from the said cloves, eucalyptus oils, cinnamon leaf oils, lemongrass oil, clove stem and sweet basil oil.

"I remember last year, there was a ceremony of launching clove development fund whereby foreign clove buyers were invited among other stake holders. This could be seen as an opportunity for them to meet with producers to share information and somehow know each other and learn the process of marketing of cloves abroad," says Mr Ali.

The Portuguese and Chinese introduced spices such as garlic, cacao and chili to the islands several centuries ago.

But it was the Omani Sultan Seyyid Said — upon moving the capital of his empire Stone Town in 1840 — who fully exploited the potential of Zanzibar’s tropical climate and incredibly fertile soil.

The Sultan mandated the establishment of clove plantations on both public and private lands and forced Zanzibar’s slave population to grow and harvest the crops, fashioning the less than 1,000-square-mile archipelago into the world’s single largest cloves producer.

Cloves were traded like gold at the time — a staple prized not only for taste but as a common method of curing and preserving meats long before the advent of the refrigerator.

While cloves remain the archipelago’s leading domestic and economic product, its production numbers have been surpassed by other mega-suppliers such as Indonesia and Madagascar.

Zanzibar, as a result, has capitalized on its history as the world’s "Spice Islands" — a title also claimed by Indonesia’s Maluku archipelago — to become a popular destination for eco-tourists and food fans alike.

 

 

Source : http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/magazine/businessweek/Clove-growers–plea-to-isles-govt/1843772-3415274-7vqja8/index.html

 

 

Kochi, October 18:  

Spot pepper markets on Tuesday showed a steady trend on sluggish activities.

Tamil Nadu dealers were buying Idukki pepper at ₹685-690 a kg directly from the farm gate, market sources told Business Line.

Major north Indian centres such as Mumbai and Delhi are flooded with pepper imported from Sri Lanka and Vietnam, they said.

Spot prices remained steady at ₹68,100 (ungarbled) and ₹71,100 (garbled) a quintal. November contract on the IPSTA was up by ₹1,000 a quintal to ₹68,000, while December and January were steady at ₹61,000 and ₹59,000.

Export prices were at $10,975 a tonne c&f for Europe and $11,225 for the US.

(This article was published on October 18, 2016)

 

 

 

Source : http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/markets/commodities/pepper-markets-stay-sluggish/article9235654.ece

 

 

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND, and PARIS — A new project seeks to diversify crops and stabilize revenues of vanilla farmers in Madagascar by introducing cocoa farming. Zurich-based Barry Callebaut, a producer of chocolate and cocoa, and Paris-based Prova, a manufacturer of vanilla extracts and flavors, joined forces to launch the project.

Madagascar, with 80,000 producers, is the largest producer of vanilla globally. The majority of the farmers in Malaysia are smallholders. They harvest and sell vanilla from July to December, leaving an income gap of at least five months.

Growing cocoa, which can be harvested throughout the year, could help the vanilla farmers reduce their dependency on the vanilla market. The project will run over the next five years. First results of the cocoa production are expected after three years.

“The cocoa and vanilla synergy is an ancient love story that dates back to the Aztecs (in Mexico), thousands of years ago,” said Alessandra Ognibene-Lerouvillois, chief sustainability officer at Prova. “Witnessing this marriage in the field, helping farmers to improve their livelihoods is a big achievement. We are excited to embark on this journey with Barry Callebaut. Together, we will initiate the cultivation of cocoa. Our objective is to enable the planters to become stakeholders in their own development, take ownership of these projects and ensure their long-term sustainability. All our efforts are working towards this goal.”

Madagascar, with 80,000 producers, is the largest producer of vanilla globally.

Prova supplies vanilla to Barry Callebaut.

“We are very happy to partner with Prova on this exceptional project,” said Oliver von Hagen, sustainability manager global sourcing at Barry Callebaut. “Vanilla is a key ingredient for us when making chocolate. This project will support farmers in being prepared for a less favorable future vanilla market. It also helps us as a company, securing a significant amount of our vanilla needs from a sustainable source.”

IDH, the Sustainable Trade Initiative, will support the project with professional consulting services and financing. The IDH, based in Utrecht, The Netherlands, seeks to accelerate sustainable trade by building coalitions of multinationals, civil society organizations, governments and other stakeholders.

Additional services in the Madagascar project will seek to increase levels of vanilla curing at the farm level and support the adoption of Good Agricultural Practices (GAP). The project will focus on vanilla farms in the district of Bemanevika in the SAVA region (formed by the district of Sambava, Antalaha, Vohemar and Andapa). Barry Callebaut and Prova will fund and support local communities through social, health and education programs.

The International Cocoa Organization, London, certifies cocoa grown in Madagascar as “Fine or Flavor Cocoa.” The flavor profiles interest users of premium cocoa. 

Source : http://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/news_home/Supplier-Innovations/2016/09/Growing_cocoa_could_benefit_Ma.aspx?ID=%7BC37AC017-803D-49A3-85DB-7781E5FAA7BF%7D&cck=1

Kochi: The signs of early withdrawal of monsoon rains from parts of southern India have raised concerns that black pepper output may fall short of forecast.

Experts had said production of the spice from the new crop will exceed last year’s by 14%. The spice industry reckons that scanty showers in September and October will cap output at a much lower level than the 55,500 tonnes predicted by the International Pepper Community (IPC).

"Growers are worried as there has been no rain in the last three weeks. Already the feeling is that it may not be a bumper crop," said Jojan Malayil, CEO of Bafna Enterprises.

Karnataka and Kerala are the primary producers of pepper, which at 28,100 tonnes last year had fetched an export revenue of Rs 1,730 crore.

The record export was mostly on the back of imports from Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, as domestic consumption has topped 50,000 tonnes.Against a projected production of 53,000 tonnes last year, farmers were able to produce only 40,000 tonnes of pepper.

The next harvest in India is in the December-January period. "Already the green berries have started coming. Exporters are getting into forward contracts and the prices are just Rs 440 per kg, perhaps indicating a surplus crop in the global market," said KB Adityan, purchase manager of Plant Lipids, a major spice oleoresin exporter.

Vietnam, the world’s largest producer, is heading for a bumper crop by January, which could bring down the global price of the commodity. Indonesia, the second largest producer, is also expecting a good crop. According to Malayil, Vietnam has exported nearly 90% of its stock. Though the country had projected an output of 1.40 lakh tonnes, it was higher by 20,000 to 30,000 tonnes.

"The production in Vietnam next year is expected to be between 1.75 to 2 lakh tonnes. There could be another 20,000 tonnes from Cambodia. So it could be a surplus situation," said Vasudevan Namboodiri, partner of N2N Spices.

Indian pepper is priced at $10,750 per tonne as compared with $7500 of Brazil and Indonesia.

 

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/54775618.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

 

This news release was issued on 14-Sept-2016

In recent years, consumers have increasingly been looking for "natural" ingredients in their food products. But when it comes to one of the world’s most popular flavors, vanilla, meeting that demand has been difficult. So food scientists are scrambling for new ways to produce vanillin — the main vanilla flavor molecule — without losing the natural label, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society.

Melody M. Bomgardner, a senior editor at C&EN, notes that less than 1 percent of vanilla flavor comes from vanilla orchids. Some of the rest has been made from pine bark, clove oil, rice bran and lignin. And the vast majority — about 85 percent — is synthesized from guaiacol, a petrochemical. This ratio poses a problem as consumers demand more natural products. Responding to the shift, major food company Nestlé announced it would eliminate artificial additives, which would include vanillin, from its chocolates for the U.S. market. How they and others in the industry will make the change is unclear, but potential solutions are in the works.

Some companies could turn to vanilla made from various plant extracts that could still be labeled natural. To boost its production from the purest source, companies are setting up grower programs in Madagascar, where the vanilla is known for its rummy taste and sweet aroma. And, in parallel, researchers are using genetics to coax yeast, plants, even the vanilla orchid itself, to produce more of the cherished flavor.

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The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With nearly 157,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

Source : https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-10/acs-mdf100616.php