Abstract:
Being the second most expensive spice in the global market, demand for vanilla is increasing daily
and vanilla production is a high-income generating agribusiness. Vanilla farming in Sri Lanka has
been limited to home gardening crops that generate hand-cured vanilla. Since vanilla cultivation
has been limited only for the particular districts of the country, this study aims to upgrade the
vanilla value chain through supportive services such as extension, finance, research and
development, ICT and novel technology applications. Finance, knowledge, and technology based
supportive services strengthen the farmers with skills, knowledge, experiences and stability of
business. Primary data were collected through surveying 62 vanilla value chain actors in the
districts of Kandy, Kegalle, and Rathnapura, as well as through focus group discussions and in depth interviews. Descriptive analysis with qualitative techniques was applied for the analysis of
the data. Both non-governmental and governmental organizations are actively involving in
supplying supportive services to vanilla value chain actors. Almost all the farmers are already
joined to the farmer communities, hubs, and relevant organizations to secure their business.
Although there are some gaps between the value chain actors and the supportive services relating
to finance, extension, research and development, processing and post-harvest management
technology, knowledge dissemination, market orientation and export market. At both ends of the
value chain, supportive service gap is moderate and in the middle of the value chain it is
considerably higher. With the advancement of modern technology, an ICT-based online platform
is the most convenient way to bridge the gap between value chain actors and supportive services.
This online linkage should be modified to link all the financial services, extension services, value
chain actors, government and non- government organizations, farmer communities, research
stations and all other relevant parties. Well customized mobile app can be suggested as the online
platform since almost all the value chain actors are used mobile phones in their day-to-day life.
Well-developed supportive services without supportive service gaps will minimize the
inefficiencies in each and every stage of value chain and will increase the overall productivity of
the vanilla value chain.