Taking a cue from soaring world prices for vanilla, a farm in Okinawa has started cultivating the valuable spice in an initiative aimed at boosting employment of disabled and low-income workers in Japan's southernmost prefecture.Vanilla is called "green gold" for the prices it fetches, reflecting the labor intensive production process. About 80 percent of world supply currently comes from Madagascar, but it has become even pricier recently with supply affected by natural disasters and speculative trading, causing a collapse of imports of the spice to Japan.The Okinawa initiative was launche…READ FULL ARTICLE
