Determination of the United States market potential of vanilla and the hibiscus flower

It aims to "determine the United States market potential of Vanilla and the Hibiscus Flower, evaluate its current level of market penetration (or lack thereof) and provide its findings to the farming cooperatives interested as part of the John Ogonowski Latin America Farmer-to-Farmer Program." The entire research was done through the use of accessing secondary data and interpreting this data to form this paper. From the data that was collected, it is clear that there has been a steady increase in the US importations as well as foreign importations of plants used in herbal teas; hibiscus being among them. The hibiscus flower is very popular in teas, and to a lesser extent, jellies. Hibiscus grown in Sudan is considered to be the best hibiscus in the world because of the land"s soil fertility; however, due to the US trade embargo with Sudan, the US does not import the hibiscus from there. As for vanilla, a steady decrease can be seen in the exportations of the vanilla bean from the high producing countries, such as Madagascar, Indonesia and Comoros to the US, while also showing an increase in exportations from the smaller producing countries because the price of the vanilla bean has been increasing, and as a result many companies switched their usage of the pure vanilla to synthetic vanilla in their confectionary products. (Author abstract)