If you happened to be sniffing around the commodity markets with a view to a dabble, you may find that the best performer of the past couple of years is something you’re more accustomed to finding in your kitchen than in your portfolio. The price of your formerly humble vanilla pod has taken off like a homesick angel, trebling in the past two years to a cheeky US$450/kg, and leaving Madagascar’s farmers — who account for approximately half of global production — laughing all the way to la banque. The abrupt realisation that there is money quite literally growing on trees has produced the usual quantity of shenanigans, with farmers picking their crops early both to cash in on the price level and to avoid theft in the fields, and reports of shadowy middlemen hoarding stock. But with food groups coming under increasing pressure to use natural flavourants rather than the lower-cost synthetics that they’ve been shoveling into us for years, the demand side of the equation should remain ro...

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