Idea 226 of 500. Cluster 11: Cinnamon and the spice garden
Cinnamon farm stays in the south-west, a week on a working smallholding through the harvest and the drying
The mechanism, from the book
The imitation out-earns the original. Vietnam earns more from cassia than Sri Lanka does from true cinnamon by selling several times the weight, while the true cinnamon, worth far more a kilo, still arrives at the port as a bale.
Every idea in cluster 11 uses this mechanism.
A first step
Sit down with a cinnamon smallholder in the south-west and ask whether two guests could stay a week in the harvest: cut with the family, learn to peel, turn the quills as they dry, and eat at the table. Agree a weekly price the family keeps most of, and the weeks in the year when the harvest runs. Offer the stay to guesthouses and tour operators along the coast. The proof is the family's yes and one week booked.
- Who pays first
- A visitor who has had a week of beaches and wants a week of real rural work, with a skill learned and something to take home.
- What leaves today
- Visitors to the south-west coast rarely see the cinnamon gardens a short drive inland, so the harvest earns nothing from tourism.
The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.
In the book
- Ch. FourThe Same Failure, Four Times
Why cassia out-earns true cinnamon - Ch. ElevenThe Mechanisms
The single desk that ends undercutting and funds brand and quality
More from cluster 11
- 221Cinnamon quills in retail packs with the grade printed, since almost no consumer knows the grades exist
- 222Cinnamon sticks as a branded gift, tied and boxed, sold in every airport shop in the world that will stock them
- 223Cinnamon-leaf and bark oils bottled for the aromatherapy trade under a Sri Lankan name
- 224Cinnamon-infused honey, sugar and salt as a range
- 225A "true cinnamon" education campaign run by producers, aimed at bakers and chefs abroad
- 227Peeler training schools, since the skill is disappearing and it is the whole value
Idea 226 of the 500 in the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? Every one can be started by one person, one family or one small firm.