Much of the island's vanilla is grown in the northeast region of the country, called the SAVA region, named after the towns of Sambava, Andapa, Vohemar, and Anthala. The sole overland connection to the rest of the island is a dirt road that goes through desert and is nearly impassable during the rainy season; during the dry season, it can take 6-8 hours to traverse. Other options are either lengthy boat trips or flights. Many of the Malagasy people live in huts that are either bamboo or corrugated metal, with little or no indoor plumbing and small solar panels for electricity. Over 100 people died last year from an out break of the bubonic plague due to very poor healthcare. If that is not poverty, what is?
That said, many of the Malagasy people do seem quite happy despite the living conditions.
The world has lots of poverty, but we are on track to rid ourselves of extreme poverty. Hopefully, it'll keep going up from there...
The difference isn't luxuries it's SURVIVAL ESSENTIALS. Like Healthcare (159th in the world), Life Expectancy (140th in the world), and Happiness (143rd in the world).
As to your argument that stopping from sending the money is going to harm the poor farmers not the corrupt government/military, I could just as easily make the reverse argument:
"If the majority of the money we send there goes only to the corrupt leadership, helping keep them in power and abusing their people, then A) Doesn't that prove that trickle-down economics don't work without regulation? Just sayin'. but more importantly B) Wouldn't STOPPING sending that money then WEAKEN that leadership, making them more susceptible to an uprising and takeover? But no, see if the people take over, you know it's not just that the money would be distributed from the leaders to the workers. They would actually start to expect rights, and prosperity growth. Which means rising prices. Which, historically, would have led to a Western-based invasion or coup (see: Republics, Banana) means the west would have to invade them and restore the status quo. "
The standard of living is much lower. They don't have "things" because they cannot afford them. But they do want them. This is because of poverty.
Ask them. Would you like a house with hot and cold running water? A gas supply? A bedroom for each of your children? A telly in every room? Be a two car family? Then ask them why they don't have this? They will answer: poverty and life is a struggle.
Not with the current model of economic exploitation pursued by western firms. They will never get the money because the companies operating the plantations simply don't have to give it to them and Madagascar's ability to govern itself is completely compromised by outside money.
I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for the Nigerian people to receive the fruits of their labor as opposed to Shell, the corporation who's bribing the government to keep conditions as profitable as possible.
Instead you should figure out what part of the supply chain is causing the local farmers to not get paid (or maybe theyre the problem and need to pay their laborers more money.). And then campaign against that or make technology to effectively destroy the middle-men. There's plenty more high value products than Vanilla I assure you where the end-workers are living in poverty.
It's problems are more corruption and political than anything else.
Here's a better rule: Completely disregard any claim about economic health, sustainability, well-being etc. if it's based on GDP.
GDP is a measure that deserves no respect and the mere use of it has caused a lot of harm to the world.
Sure, GDP isn't a perfect measure, but if grows odds it's a good thing.
GDP growing is NOT a good thing per se. It does a mix of capturing how much productivity is being commercialized (if we all paid our neighbors to do our household chores, GDP would double or something instantly with zero productivity gain), how much pay is going to non-productive or even counterproductive work (see the phenomenon of bullshit jobs^1) and ignoring externalities (growth in fossil fuel extraction and consumption, for example is overall negative for society).
It's not useful to even assume that GDP growth correlates with positive economic status in measures we actually want (i.e. measurements of overall long-term prosperity)
^1: https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
But at a macro level those seem unlikely to dominate the development.
If GDP is increased by disposing nuclear waste in international waters that's obviously bad. But generally speaking degenerate trends like that don't dominate economic development. I hope :)
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/five-measures-of-grow... (note that World Economic Forum is far from some radical hippy organization)
Another perspective: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/12/doughn...
There are simple places where growth necessarily means we're beyond some limit and causing more problems the more we grow. Growth is not the goal, the goal is well-being and health. Growth is only the goal when we're under the level that maximizes well-being and have room to grow before problems start getting exacerbated.
So it's different from any other country how?
Transparency International ranks Madagascar at #155 on their corruption perception index. That's not a slightly bad ranking, that means they barely have a functioning system because it's so riddled with corruption. Their neighbors on the ranking are: Zimbabwe, Cambodia, Haiti, Myanmar, etc. Venezuela for reference is presently #169.
So that's one way they're (unfortunately) different.
Heritage ranks Madagascar #119 on their economic freedom index. They receive a 32/100 score on property rights, 19/100 on government integrity, 21/100 on judicial. Their summary on rule of law:
"Although the legal structure provides protections for private property rights and secured interests in property are recognized if not entirely enforced, the vast majority of farmers do not hold the official rights to their land. A lack of training, resources, and personnel hampers judicial effectiveness, and case backlogs are lengthy. Corruption is pervasive at all levels of government."
Besides, we can reasonable expect that if (when!) labor costs go up enough I think we're likely to see automation solutions to the labor intensive portions of growing vanilla.
Your buying artificial vanilla instead of real vanulla will NOT help make people in Madagascar less poor! Indeed, it will only help make them poorer (by reducing demand for their labor). If you want to help them, you should consume more real vanilla, as that will result in more work for them, thus increasing their incomes.
Yes, we could help them even more by educating them and turning the country into, say, a software developer powerhouse. But that's not easy, and will take time. In the meantime, the only thing you can do to immediately increase their income is to consume more of what they produce.
or you can pass laws to bring in temporary migrants from African countries to do the extra work and still keep wages down.
It's not like I didn't know that this is how the world works, but this specific case is even more of a slap in the face. It's kinda fucked up to think that in the local specialty store merely a couple pods of vanilla (a few grams each) go for 6-7 dollars, but these folks live in poverty. But more fucked up is the implication that to keep vanilla prices down we specifically maintain these conditions, because of cheap labor.
Oh well, the artificial stuff for me from now on.