Advocacy from the Sustainable Vanilla Initiative and local partners resulted in a government-issued decree to maintain campaign opening dates, to the mid-July 2018 date in Sava region. These campaign dates were recommended by the regional local scientific staff, based on the maturity of the green beans. In years past, especially with very high vanilla prices, early picking of immature beans has been a significant problem for vanilla quality.
Local actors, who had been pushing hard to move opening dates forward to June 20th were convinced to maintain campaign dates after a field visit and consultation with farmers. This shows great progress from last year, when it was difficult to keep campaign opening dates to after the national commemoration day on June 26th.
In addition to re-affirming the campaign date, the decree laid out all requirements for local stakeholders in the Sava region to conduct the campaign in 2018, and attached campaign opening dates to specific communes in order to improve commune compliance.
SVI had an important role in 2018 in advocating to determine and maintain the opening dates based on bean maturity and is pleased with the outcome.
