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In July 2019, VANEX collaborated with The Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries with support from the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) to initiate the declaration of vanilla harvest dates. The declaration of the harvest dates was introduced to ensure that there are unified national dates which vanilla stakeholders believe that at least 85-90% of the vanilla crop is ready for harvest in most parts of the growing districts; to eliminate the vice of premature vanilla harvest that affected the quality of Uganda’s vanilla.
The initiative commenced with the harvest date declared for the June / July 2019 harvesting season by the State Minister for Agriculture Hon Christopher Kibanzanga. Since then, this is a bi-annual event in the vanilla industry calendar, as vanilla is harvested twice a year.
The initiative has since yielded results, with international buyers reporting a substantial improvement in the quality of Uganda’s vanilla – higher vanillin content and reduced reflections due to moulding, a quality issue that is prevalent in cured vanilla which originated from premature beans. “We have seen an increased interest from international markets for Uganda’s Vanilla,” said Joseph Lukandwa, Operations Manager at UVAN Ltd.
“Uganda’s Vanilla has been recorded to have the highest concentration of Vanillin in the world. Therefore, continued observation of the harvest dates will support high-quality vanilla production and thus promote the competitiveness of Ugandan vanilla in the international market,” said Florence Nagawa, Executive Director of VANEX.
It is now a generally accepted intervention by vanilla stakeholders that observation of harvest dates can enhance the quality of the beans bought off farmers and exported. In addition, it will surely eliminate immature harvesting, a practice that has negatively affected the quality and reputation of Uganda’s vanilla in the past. So far, the declaration of harvest dates has been quite fruitful; the image of Uganda’s vanilla industry in the international market has significantly improved, as evidenced by the positive testimonials from the Global Vanilla Buying Community organized under the Sustainable Vanilla Initiative ( SVI) from the United States of America.
In respect to VANEX’s goals, Uganda aims to be the number one source of the highest quality vanilla in the world, and the declaration and observation of harvest dates bring us closer to this goal.
