This week on Facing the Future, we hear from Ben Ritz, Director of the Center for Growing America’s Future at the Progressive Policy Institute, and one of our more frequent show contributors.
Ben has written several interesting pieces including one where he asserts that the Fitch rating agency’s recent downgrade of the federal government’s credit rating should be a wakeup call for all those concerned about the budget and our national debt. So we talk to Ben about that and also, how is the federal government doing about investing in scientific and technological research and innovation a year after Congress passed the Chips and Science Act.
Denver Public Schools (DPS) was once a national model for school innovation and reform. District leadership focused on student learning and giving parents choices to find the best fit for their children.
Now, the DPS board is stacked with directors beholden to the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. It’s so ideologically married to the union’s self-interests — and so incompetent — that it continually tests the city’s capacity for outrage.
Over the past two years, the Biden administration has made large national investments aimed at putting America ahead in the global race to develop clean energy industries and jobs. Investment is flowing all across the country, for projects like solar panel factories in Louisiana, energy-efficient apartment buildings in New York and electric vehicle battery factories sprouting everywhere from Georgia to Michigan.
This emphasis on a green transition comes at an important time. Just last week, our nation’s deadliest wildfire killed at least 111 people and destroyed Maui’s historic town of Lahaina. While detailed studies have not yet determined exactly how climate change influenced Maui’s fire, climate scientistshave pointed to specificclimate-driven factors, and existing attribution science suggests that climate change fuels warmer temperatures, less rainfall, stronger storms and powerful winds — increasing the likelihood of devastating events like this. It’s clear there is no time like the present to create a lower-emissions economy, mitigate climate impacts and protect public safety.
Yet, even with increased federal attention, implementing investments and new solutions has become difficult. One reason is our workforce. The rapidly growing clean energy sector is bumping up against serious labor constraints — facing challenges filling jobs and ensuring workers have the right skills for these positions. In the next seven years, there are expected to be over 550,000 new energy-transition jobs in the U.S. Just in 2022, U.S. green job postings on LinkedIn jumped 20% — yet, the pool of workers with the skills required to fill these jobs only grew by 8.4%.
Students may not realize it, but when they head back to school next week, public education will be funded at the highest level in Wisconsin history. It’s important to recognize a handful of Democrats, all from blue, blue Milwaukee, who courageously cast a hard vote this legislative session. As a result, Wisconsin will also provide more equal state funding for non-traditional K-12 schools.
Despite pressure from teachers unions, five Democrats supported increasing public charter school funding. The bill, Act 11, was an unexpected, complicated, bipartisan compromise that Democratic Governor Tony Evers hammered out with Wisconsin’s Republican legislative majority in order to pass the state budget. The charter school funding provision represents a concession for Evers, whose record on charter schools is lukewarm and, at times, antagonistic.
In addition to providing a historic level of K-12 education funding across the state’s education sectors, Wisconsin’s new two-year budget will eventually bring state spending on Milwaukee’s public charter school students to within 90% of what it spends on district school students. Specifically, public charter schools will get an extra $2,121 per child, increasing per pupil funding to $11,385.
As America’s students are heading back to school in the coming weeks, non-instructional spending at colleges and universities — which includes spending on administration and student services — have been skyrocketing over the last several decades. Yet, there is little evidence that this massive expansion in administration and services has improved students’ academic experience.
Today, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) released a new report “How to Cut Administrative Bloat at U.S. Colleges”detailing how administrative positions and spending at colleges and universities have grown disproportionately over the last several decades. Report author Paul Weinstein Jr., Senior Fellow at PPI, outlines the reasons administrative expenses and personnel at post-secondary institutions are rising and specifically reviewed faculty versus non-faculty positions at the top 50 universities in the country.
The report finds that on average, the top universities have only 1 faculty member per 11 students and by contrast, the same institutions have 1 non-faculty employee per 4 students. In fact, Weinstein finds that three universities on the list, California Institute of Technology, Duke University, and the University of California at San Diego have more non-faculty employees than students.
“The results of this research underscore that non-faculty employees at universities, both public and private, have grown considerably and without necessary oversight, under college presidents and their boards,” said Paul Weinstein Jr. “While some of this growth may have been necessary, there is no doubt that much of it has not.”
To address this growing issue and encourage universities to pass some of the savings on to students, Weinstein proposes to trim the number of non-faculty positions by 1% per year over the next five years. He also suggests that the federal government should shift its focus from increasing financial aid to using its leverage to encourage colleges and universities to reduce costs and lower tuition. Weinstein recommends that the government should be given the authority to negotiate the costs of tuition and fees with any post-secondary institution that accepts students who have received either grants, loans, or tax incentives from the federal government.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
America’s colleges and universities are at a crossroads. The number of schools closing their doors continues to grow driven by the declining number of students pursuing a bachelor’s. This situation is expected to worsen because of a number of factors.
• Starting in 2025 the U.S. will face the so-called “enrollment cliff,” in which the population of college aid students will drop by 15% over four years. Colleges can expect to lose over 575,000 students over that four-year time span.
• The strong labor market has led more high school graduates to delay indefinitely their pursuit of a bachelor’s degree.
• Young Americans have become increasingly skeptical of the value of a college degree. The rising cost of college and the amount of debt students are required to take in order to graduate has re-enforced this viewpoint.
In the past when faced with funding shortfalls, colleges and universities have attempted to “grow their way” out of the problem. Many offered new graduate programs, including terminal master’s degrees (no doctoral option) and certificates. Purdue University, under former President Mitch Daniels, purchased the mostly for-profit Kaplan University in 2017 and turned it into Purdue Global, with approximately 30,000 online students paying full price. Other colleges and universities also began increasing their online offerings to expand their access to a larger number of part-time graduate students. But unlike Daniels and Purdue — who used the revenue to hold undergraduate tuition flat for a decade — most schools simply used the funds to avoid making tough choices such as cutting expenses.
Other approaches included the recruitment of international students interested in pursuing a degree at an elite American college, particularly wealthy Chinese students. At present, there are around 290,086 Chinese students attending university in the U.S., with another 199,182 from India.
But growth strategies won’t work as effectively going forward. Most leading universities now have extensive online programs and in recent years the number of international students coming to study in the U.S. has begun to recede as more options become available elsewhere. While some elite universities can increase the number of undergraduates they enroll, others, particularly those that are more tuition-dependent, will be forced to close or merge with other institutions.
There is another alternative, however, which is for schools to streamline their costs and pass some of the savings on to students in the form of increased scholarships, lower tuition, or a combination of both. Specifically, colleges could cut non-faculty positions by 1% per year over the next five years and use the savings to reduce tuition.
For several decades, higher education has experienced a significant upswing in administrative spending and it is projected to continue to grow by seven percent over the next 10 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Non-instructional spending, which includes spending on administration and student services, outpaced instructional spending from 2010 to 2018, according to the Council of Trustees and Alumni. During that period spending on student services rose a sizable 29% and administrative costs increased 19%, while instructional spending only rose 17% by comparison.
Not only did spending for administration and student services increase, so too did the number of employees in those areas. Between 1976 and 2018, the number of full-time faculty employed at colleges and universities in the U.S. increased by 92%, during which time total student enrollment increased by 78%. During this same period, however, full-time administrators and other professionals employed by those institutions increased by 164% and 452%, respectively.
There is little evidence that the dramatic expansion in staffing for administrative and student services improved students’ academic experience. In fact, some observers contend that the explosion in non-faculty has made it harder for faculty to educate students. In part, because many of these administrators have to justify their existence by creating more regulations and processes. As Todd Zywicki, a law professor at George Mason University has noted, “The interesting thing about the administrative bloat in higher education is, literally, nobody knows who all these people are or what they’re doing.
There are times when a significant lag between the FDA approval of vaccines and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendation of those vaccines throws any newly approved vaccines into patient access purgatory. Such action has occurred several times in the last few years, as guidance from CDC has taken several months or years to come to fruition after FDA approval.1,2
Unlike medicines or devices, patients and healthcare professionals don’t partake in the benefits of vaccines unless CDC provides guidance on who may receive the vaccines at what specific interval or, at times, provides guidance that does not align with FDA-approved usage. This leaves patients and healthcare professionals in a regulatory twilight zone since the FDA has approved the vaccine as safe and effective while CDC has failed to provide prompt guidance for its use or has provided recommendation contradicting the FDA-approved indication(s).
The decade’s glamor rocket launch paid off: American- and Canadian-designed James Webb Space Telescope, pushed into space by a European Space Agency-built Ariane 5 two years ago, now sits contentedly far above the Earth at “Lagrange 2”* a million miles away, sending back messages about star formation, dark matter, exoplanets and the odd phenomena of early galaxies.
The Webb’s passage through the ionosphere brought it through a cloud of about 5000 smaller satellites — weather and climate monitors, maritime and automotive GPS guides, gaming stations, governments’ spying eyes, cable television forwarders — in low-earth orbits ranging from 300 kilometers to a few thousand kilometers above the earth. Twenty months later, this satellite cloud is appreciably thicker, numbering nearly 7,000. In a sense, as the Webb opens up a large high-altitude bay window on the universe; far below, massive growth in private-sector launches of small, disposable commercial means the sky is filling up with eyes and voices.
Some data: Forty years ago in 1993, about 510 satellites were in orbit. By 2000, the total was just about 1,000; then each year from 2000 through 2010, about 100 satellites went into orbit. During the Webb launch year 2021, 1,400 smaller satellites went up, matching the entire decade-long total for the 2000s, and last year’s 2,000 was another 40% jump. Thus the count of working satellites has doubled since the Biden inauguration ceremony, and this year promises pretty much the same.
And some recent and near-future launches to illustrate:
Diversity: Rocket Lab, from New Zealand’s Mahia peninsula on July 17, puts up (a) four NASA satellites meant to guide small fleets of future space vehicles; (b) a LEO (“low-earth orbital”) satellite for Canadian communications operator Telsat, and (c) two 3U satellites for Spire Global, a weather and maritime services provider.
Commerce: Space-X Starlink launch, from Vandenberg Space Force Base (previously Vand. Air Force Base) a week from Friday (Aug. 17). This one carries 15 small satellites, weighing about 260 kilos each and meant for a 550-kilometer high orbit. A twin Space-X/Starlink launch from Cape Canaveral on the same day will add 22 more. Starlink’s eventual goal is a network of 42,000 small satellites providing “video calls, online gaming, streaming, and other high data rate activities” to areas the global fiber-optic cable system that carries most Internet traffic does not reach, at a cost of about $10 billion, more or less the same as the JWST’s one-satellite price.
Science: Nine days later on the 26th, from Tanegashima, Japan’s space agency launches a moon-landing vehicle known as SLIM (“Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon”), weighing 450 pounds and packed with cameras and mineralogical survey material and meant as an initial demonstration of returnable moon-exploration devices. The rocket is a Mitsubishi H11A, first used in 2001.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, which does a running count of active satellites, reports that the very large majority of these satellites are American (in some way): 4,529 of the 6,718, including 3,996 private commercial satellites, 260 civilian government, and 247 military, carry a U.S. flag of some sort. China operates 590, Russia 174, and other countries 1,425. About 88% — 5,938, by UCS’s very specific count — are in low-earth orbits. The largest single contributor to the growth is the “Starlink” internet service run by Space-X, which has put up about 4,698 satellites as of mid-2023 and ultimately hopes for a fleet of 42,000. These last for about five years, then fall down and burn up on impact with the atmosphere. Webb’s lifespan is uncertain, but should be “significantly more than 10 years.”
FURTHER READING
Union of Concerned Scientists counts working satellites.
NASA passes on the latest James Webb Space Telescope observations.
… while the European Space Agency explains “LaGrange 2” (a stable orbital point, about four times as far from Earth as the moon, one of five such spots discovered through calculations by 18th-century mathematician Joseph LaGrange, a Paris resident and Torino native).
On-line journal Spaceflight Now tracks launches and payloads.
A United Nations index of 16,327 “objects launched into outer space” since 1957 (their 2021 count was 8,089).
And last… Which generation-old sci-fi show got it right?
“Boldly go”: The public sector and, international cooperation for deep-space exploration, expanding frontiers of knowledge, and a search for the common good in Star Trek.
“20 minutes into the future”: Ruthless media conglomerates and vast fleets of disposable low-orbit satellites, floods of addictive low-quality information, and social collapse in The Max Headroom Chronicles.
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank Progressive Economy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
This week, Ed Gresser, Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) submitted comments to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) on ways trade policy can advance racial and gender equity, as well as support historically underserved communities.
Gresser outlines how the U.S. tariff system is an unusually regressive part of the tax system, highlighting the fact that tariff rates are much higher on cheaper, mass-market consumer goods such as clothes, shoes, silverware, and home linens than on expensive luxuries, and so impose higher costs on low-income families.
“There is strong evidence that the tariff system has some detrimental effects in several areas, and in some ways, it presents an unfortunate contrast with other American taxes. Specifically, it taxes cheap and simple consumer goods much more heavily than analogous luxuries, and taxes many women’s clothing products at higher rates than analogous men’s clothes. This makes the tariff system an unusually regressive part of the American tax system, and likely the only one with an explicit gender bias,” Gresser writes.
Gresser notes the “Pink Tax” in clothing tariffs, pointing out that the tariff system taxes women’s clothing at higher rates than men’s. He and PPI Summer Policy Fellow, Elaine Wei provide a detailed review of gendered clothing tariff rates, comparing men’s and women’s coats, suits and ensembles, shirts and blouses, and underwear. Lastly, he writes that communities most often impacted by tariff disparities rarely know they are affected, and are thus less likely to respond to government requests for public comment or even to direct outreach. Gresser urges policymakers as a first step to develop more detailed and contextual publications on the way these systems function and how they affect different communities across the country.
“Many of the peak tariff lines apply to products not made in the United States, and could be revised without harm to U.S. growth or existing employment though at some modest cost in revenue,” Gresser continues.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
Elan Sykes, Energy Policy Analyst at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) released the following statement on the one-year anniversary of President Biden signing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the largest-ever investment into clean energy technology, into law.
“The Inflation Reduction Act is a historic inflection point in America’s progress toward clean energy investment, and decarbonization. This legislation creates opportunities for working-class families across the country through its monumental investment in manufacturing, working to lower energy costs for all Americans during a time of record inflation. However, there is much more work to be done.
“Maximizing the benefits of the IRA will require Congress and the Biden Administration to reduce barriers to deployment in the federal permitting process, expand secure supply chains domestically and in partnership with global allies, and increase the skilled clean energy workforce going forward. PPI calls on the Biden Administration and both parties in Congress to work pragmatically to secure a cleaner, brighter future for American Energy.”
Sykes, along with Paul Bledsoe, Strategic Advisor at PPI, recently released a report on a new ambitious approach to permitting reform. The report proposes a fundamental change to the permitting process by utilizing new analytics, scoping, and mapping technologies that can provide federal agencies and regulators the tools they need to comprehensively approve large batches of projects together, instead of individually reviewing projects.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
As the climate crisis worsens, the debate over emissions from natural gas is heating up, too. Unfortunately, both gas opponents and gas supporters have been cherry-picking the data, especially regarding the lifecycle emissions of gas, which under almost all circumstances are still lower than coal.
Submitted to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in Response to June 11, 2023, Request for Public Comment on Ways Trade Policy Can Advance Racial and Gender Equity and Support Historically Underserved Communities
Thank you for this chance to offer suggestions on ways trade policy might better meet the needs of America’s underserved families and communities. I am Vice President of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit think tank established in 1989, which publishes on a wide range of public policy topics. My research focuses principally on U.S. international economic policy, with a particular focus on trade issues. I previously served for nine years at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, including as agency speechwriter (1998-2001) and as Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Policy and Economics (2015-2021). In the latter capacity I oversaw USTR’s economic research and use of trade data, administration of the Generalized System of Preferences, and policy coordination work including concurrent service as Chair of the Trade Policy Staff Committee.
I would like to focus on two questions USTR poses in its June 12 Federal Register notice:
“Are there trade policies, provisions, or actions which are detrimental to advancing racial and gender equity, equality, and economic empowerment?”
and
“What best practices should USTR consider to ensure that advancing equity, equality, and economic empowerment is standardized in community and stakeholder engagement regarding the development and implementation of U.S. trade and investment policy?”
As a point of departure, I applaud Ambassador Tai’s sustained interest in understanding any detrimental effects trade policy may have on underserved Americans, and finding ways policy might more effectively meet their needs. There is strong evidence that the tariff system has some detrimental effects in several areas, and in some ways, it presents an unfortunate contrast with other American taxes. Specifically, it taxes cheap and simple consumer goods much more heavily than analogous luxuries, and taxes many women’s clothing products at higher rates than analogous men’s clothes. This makes the tariff system an unusually regressive part of the American tax system, and likely the only one with an explicit gender bias. Many of the peak tariff lines apply to products not made in the United States, and could be revised without harm to U.S. growth or existing employment though at some modest cost in revenue.
The second question, on ways USTR might draw more advice from lower-income and underserved communities is more challenging. Trade agreements are often intensely debated and sometimes termed “non-transparent.” The permanent systems an agreement modifies, though, are typically far less frequently debated and seem to be largely opaque not only to the public but to many experts. This means communities affected badly by these systems rarely know they are affected, are thus relatively unlikely to respond to solicitations for advice, and may have difficulty even responding to direct outreach. U.S. officials hoping to encourage their participation in policy development might as a first step develop more detailed, regular, and contextual publications on the way these systems function and how they affect different groups within American society. This would help build understanding at least within the government, Congress, and academic communities, perhaps elicit ideas and ways to improve them, and likely encourage more informed discussion with underserved communities.
A more detailed discussion of these topics follows: first, on the regressivity of consumer goods tariffs and their consequent impact by income level and race/ethnicity; second, the gendered nature of the clothing tariff schedules, and the unintended but explicit bias this has created; and third, the challenge of drawing advice on policy from “underserved” communities.
Public investments in research and development (R&D) during the 20th century have powered many of America’s greatest advancements. However, federal funding for R&D has been declining over the past 50 years. Now, as Congress negotiates spending bills for the new fiscal year, investments in R&D are being further starved in an effort to reduce budget deficits. Although now is a time when the federal government should be unwinding the nation’s debts, cutting R&D funding is a shortsighted decision that will barely change the fiscal trajectory while hobbling America’s ability to innovate.
When Congress passed the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act one year ago, it was supposed to herald a $200 billion increase in public R&D that reversed the long-term funding decline and prevented China from gaining a technological edge. But lawmakers failed to appropriate the funds needed to meet this target in Fiscal Year 2023 — and the outlook for 2024 is even worse.
Congress will return to Washington in September embroiled in a partisan standoff over spending. Extremists in the far-right Freedom Caucus are demanding massive spending cuts beyond those agreed upon in the debt ceiling negotiations earlier this summer. Included in the House GOP’s proposed appropriations bills are deep cuts to R&D investments in energy, agriculture, the environment, space exploration, and health and medicine. Only the defense sector will see an expansion of R&D funding.
Since Xi Jinping rose to power in 2013, China has pursued an increasingly self-isolating diplomacy of jut-jawed belligerence. Nothing better illustrates the damage done to Beijing’s global standing than Xi’s declaration of a “no limits” partnership with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
For starters, it was spectacularly mistimed. Xi announced the new Sino-Russian alliance during the Beijing Olympics in February 2022, just 20 days before Russia invaded Ukraine.
There’s no indication that Putin gave Xi a heads up about the attack, though President Biden had repeatedly warned the world it was coming. The invasion put the Chinese leader on the spot because it brazenly violated two principles Beijing supposedly holds sacred — territorial integrity and non-interference in the affairs of sovereign states.
The full title should be “How the New Wave of AI Can Speed Adoption of New Technologies, Boost Productivity, Create New Well-Paying Jobs, and Democratize Innovation: The Case of Agriculture.”
We’re working on a study of the applications of AI to agriculture. We’ve laid out the main points that we are covering in an attached slide deck.
Here is a summary of the deck:
People are worried that generative artificial intelligence (gAI)–and large language models (LLMs) in particular–will destroy jobs.
We propose that LLMs should be thought of as a General Purpose Adoption Technology (GPAT) with the ability to break down some of the barriers to innovation that have held back stagnant sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing.
The key is that LLMs are democratizing: They will allow small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to experiment with, adopt, and maintain new technologies such as machine learning and robots with less need to depend on expensive third-parties such as systems integrators.
To put it another way, today SMEs that want to digitize have to purchase scarce “complementary inputs” such as design, installation and maintenance expertise at a high price. LLMs lower the long-term cost of those complementary inputs, and make them more widely available
The best analogy is the introduction of the personal computer. Previous to the PC, information technology applications were controlled by centralized IT staff. But the PC brought the IT revolution down to the level of SMEs and individual departments of large enterprises, and greatly accelerated the rate of adoption.
Because GPATs reduce dependence on expensive intermediaries, the new adoption technologies will accelerate diffusion, boost productivity, lower prices, and raise incomes. Mounting evidence also suggests that faster productivity growth could also bring more job creation.
Since 2007, sectors with faster productivity growth have added 2.2 million jobs, while sectors with slower or negative productivity growth have lost 1.2 million jobs.
The new adoption technologies will aid a wide range of lagging industries, including manufacturing, construction, and food production.
In this study we will focus on agriculture, which has suffered from the unhappy combination of weak productivity growth for the past 20 years and no employment growth. The result has been rising food prices, stagnant farm incomes, and weak rural incomes.
We suggest that LLMs can accelerate the adoption of digital innovations on the farm (see Google’s Mineral), while boosting productivity and incomes, creating jobs and reviving local rural economies.
We are already seeing applications of LLMs to agriculture, as the Farmers Business Network shows. We conclude by suggesting that applying LLMs to farming may reduce regional disparities.
How did vanilla get a reputation like this? A look at the facts argues pretty strongly that vanilla isn’t boring, plain, or conventional at all; rather it is exotic and expensive, hard to find and even harder to grow, and maybe a bit scandalous. You be the judge:
Origins and chemistry: Like chocolate, vanilla is native to Mexico and was originally cultivated around Vera Cruz. Popular among the Aztec nobility as a flavoring for high-end drinks and sweets, it comes from the treated “pod” of an orchid pollinated by local bees and hummingbirds. The main active ingredient is a phenol-based chemical compound informally termed “vanillin.”
“Globalization” and modern production: Vanilla cultivation outside Mexico is challenging because no one so far has discovered another natural pollinator. Nonetheless, the 19th-century French empire found an alternative way to do it: the hand-pollination technique invented in 1841 by an enslaved 12-year-old farmhand named Edmond Albius on Reunion (then a French Indian Ocean possession, now an overseas department), and introduced to Madagascar after the colonial conquest in the 1890s. Dutch colonials later introduced the same technique to Indonesia (or more specifically, the southern Sunda island group). Together Madagascar and Indonesia now produce about half of the world’s roughly 7,600 tons of natural vanilla each year. Mexico adds about 500 tons; other outposts in Papua New Guinea, Tahiti, and Uganda account for most of the rest. To put this in context, each year the world’s farmers produce 25,000 tons of sugar, and 500 tons of the cocoa-bean precursor to chocolate, for every ton of natural vanilla.
Cost: Scarcity and difficulty of production make vanilla, in most years, the world’s second-most-expensive agricultural product. (As measured by price per kilo.) Saffron at $500/kilo is easily the priciest; vanilla beans usually come at about $50 per kilo depending on annual marketing and harvest. Cardamom sometimes puts up a fight for second, though.
Trade: Americans bought about a quarter of the world’s 2022 vanilla crop, or 1,989 tons in total. Most — 1,448 tons — came from Madagascar, followed by 207 tons of Indonesian vanilla (Flores, Sumba, west Timor) and 172 tons from Uganda making up most of the rest. Other suppliers included 39 tons from Papua New Guinea, 36 tons from India, 24 tons from the Comoros Islands, and 0.5 tons from Tahiti. The harvested, dried, and washed pods arrive in cans, often groups of six weighing 48 kilos, mostly by air cargo. Total import value was $345 million — about two minutes worth of America’s year-long $3.27 trillion in total goods imports — and vanilla, like most spices, has no U.S. tariff.
Sexual reputation: Vanilla is sometimes said, maybe most frequently by vanilla marketers, to have a natural aphrodisiac effect. Though obviously a convenient sales pitch, this may have a factual base at least in the case of some rodents. A 2012 paper (Maskeri et al.) from the Pharmacognosy Journal: “Vanillin in the dose of 200 mg/kg demonstrated aphrodisiac properties in male wistar rats.”
Real vs. artificial: The 7,600-ton total output is far too little to meet the world’s flavoring and aromatic needs. Most vanilla used in sweets and cooking, therefore, is not the natural hand-pollinated stuff but artificial “vanillin.” This is the same active molecule, but extracted by chemistry-industry professionals in five factories — three in China, one in France, one in the United States — and not from delicate orchids but “wood pulp.” a substance with a more convincing claim to plainness, ordinariness, and conventionality than vanilla itself.
FURTHER READING
Merriam-Webster’s “vanilla” site — see uninspiring adjective definitions, also scroll down for the startling etymology.
Origins and production:
The origin: NPR reports on Mexico’s troubled vanilla industry.
The inventor: Child laborer, enslaved farm-worker, and agricultural revolutionary Edmond Albius invented hand-pollination of vanilla orchids and so founded the modern global vanilla industry.
… and Reunion, now an overseas French Department, pitches the product 180 years later.
The top producer: Le Monde on an oversupply crisis this summer in Madagascar.
… and direct to Madagascar’s GEM (Groupement des Exporteurs de Vanille de Madagascar).
And the University of Florida explains attempts to grow it here.
Cost:
A list of the world’s most expensive (per-kilo) ag products places vanilla second after saffron.
A modern-day marketer enthusiastically details vanilla’s supposed aphrodisiac effects.
… and a scientific paper provides some backup, at least for “male wistar rats.”
And another thing:
“Chocolate” is originally an Aztec word, recalling the cocoa bean’s original Native American cultivators. (The cocoa tree’s modern scientific name, Theobroma cacoa, means food of the gods” and is one of the original Linneus’ species-names.) Chocolate’s first documented use, confirmed by archeologists in the early 2000s, was about 2,600 years ago in Guatemala. Nineteenth-century colonial entrepreneurs, mainly Brits in contrast to the French and Dutch vanilla-propagators, introduced cocoa trees to West Africa. This region remains the main cocoa-bean producer, particularly centered in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, and accounts for about 70% of modern cocoa-bean production. Other production spreads around the Caribbean littoral, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. The Ghana Cocoa Board.
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank Progressive Economy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
