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ePaper created 2015-12-01, 11:30:18 | version 1.43.00
34 akzente 1/15 But the company has also undertaken a social commitment. It provides cash advances, sub- sidises health insurance and pays teachers in the region’s primary schools. All this is based on a simple principle: we help you, and you sell us your high-quality vanilla. And that is where GIZ comes in. Com- missioned by Symrise, GIZ may have a dif- ferent motivation, but the two parties share identical objectives. ‘Our aim is to achieve a better life for small farmers,’ says Alan Walsch from GIZ. ‘If we can do that through part- nerships with companies in which ultimately both sides benefit, then it’s a genuine win- win situation,’ he continues. GIZ and Sym- rise currently cooperate with 4,000 farmers. ‘We are seen as honest brokers,’ Walsch ex- plains. Training fields for a wide variety of crops With advisory services provided by GIZ, Sym- rise supports the creation of cooperatives to enable small farmers to divide up their work better and represent their interests jointly, for example in negotiations on vanilla prices. At first sight that would seem to run contrary to the interests of the company. But it is clearly less efficient for Symrise to negotiate separate deals with each farmer individually. Vanilla farmer Totoantsarika also belongs to a coop- erative, and he sees that as having one major benefit: ‘We help each other to keep watch over the fields,’ he says, adding that their plan- tations in the depths of the jungle are occa- sionally visited by thieves. GIZ uses training fields to teach farmers how to cultivate vegetables, nuts and fruit. The aim is to enable families to grow a range of their own produce throughout the year and not rely solely on vanilla and rice. So what’s in it for Symrise? ‘If I don’t know where my next meal is coming from, I’m cer- tainly not going to be concerned about the quality of my vanilla plants,’ says Walsch from GIZ. Another argument against exces- sive rice cultivation is the leaching effect it has on the soil. It is also important to strike a balance because farmers are clearing areas of isfied. ‘We were never sure we could buy enough high-quality vanilla from the inter- mediaries,’ says Clemens Tenge, one of Sym- rise’s vanilla experts. So in 2006 the company decided to adopt a hands-on approach. ‘We put together our own team and we now buy directly from the small farmers,’ Tenge ex- plains. That was easier said than done. For with so many intermediaries involved, com- petition is fierce. And the small farmers are not accustomed to making permanent ar- rangements with just one company and in- stead decide who they will sell their vanilla to from one year to the next. As Tenge puts it, there’s only one long-term strategy that really works in the company’s favour: ‘We build trust.’ Symrise uses some of the money it saves by cutting out the middleman to train farm- ers in better production methods, thereby making a sustained improvement in quality. Top: Hoping for improvements: René Totoantsarika, pictured here outside his house, has given careful thought to Symrise’s offers. financial circumstances to sell unripe pods at very low prices. Based at Holzminden in Lower Saxony, Symrise AG is the world’s fourth-largest manufacturer of scents and aromas and a supplier to Unilever. Symrise has been buy- ing vanilla from Madagascar for years. But the company was growing increasingly dissat- Bottom: It takes three years for the vanilla creeper (left) to produce its first flowers. Harvested when green, the vanilla pods turn black after drying and fermentation (right).