Jai Chaitanya Dasa, a Hare Krishna monk from a temple in Bangalore, India, has established a non-profit organisation that promotes organic and sustainable growing methods among local farmers and manages the collection, initial processing and sale of vanilla pods.
The local farmers involved in the vanilla project receive 80% of the earnings generated from the sale and the remaining 20% goes to the workers who process, sort and dispatch the vanilla. Initial processing takes place at a small factory in Mysore and most of the work is carried out and supervised by women, who are paid up to three times the pay rates for similar work elsewhere in India, which allows them to send their children to school.
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