From the Financial Times, December 25:
Extreme weather has halved production in the biggest supplier of the world’s most expensive spice
The city of Torbat-e Jam is famed for the acres of colourful crocus fields that yield one of Iran’s most prized exports: saffron. But for Reza, a local farmer heaving bags of the orange-red spice into the city’s bustling spice exchange, this year has been a disaster.
“My family harvested only 900kg this season, down from 1,500kg,” he said, blaming bad weather for decimating his precious crop.
More than nine-tenths of the world’s saffron comes from Iran. It is known as “desert gold” due to its ability to thrive in drier climates and prized for its powerful aroma, rich flavour and deep colour.
But changing weather patterns and water shortages are having a dramatic effect on the industry, according to producers and traders, leading to significant falls in yields that have pushed the price of the world’s most expensive spice to fresh highs.
Growers in the Khorasan region that includes Torbat-e Jam said this year’s yields would be less than half those of 2022. “Total production is expected to fall to about 170 tonnes from nearly 400 tonnes,” said Ali Shariati-Moghaddam, chief executive of Novin Saffron, a leading Iranian producer and exporter.
Mojtaba Payam-Asgari, a director at the Torbat-e Jam saffron exchange, said a freezing winter followed by a dry spring and summer temperatures that peaked at 50°C had a devastating effect on the region in north-eastern Iran close to the Afghanistan border. “All 2,000 local surface wells went completely dry,” he said.Experts warn that such extremes are not a one-off but the result of climate change that is altering weather patterns around the world.
“Iran is more vulnerable than the global average, especially in arid and semi-arid areas [where saffron is grown],” said Mohammad Darvish, an Iranian environmentalist. “Rainfall is declining, and evaporation and temperatures are soaring,” he added.
The price of premium saffron has surged as a result, to $1,400 per kilo domestically, double what it cost last year. The same amount can be $1,800 overseas, according to suppliers....
....MUCH MORE
In March of 2019 we had a similar story but with a crazy twist:
Commodities: The World's Most Valuable Spice May Be In Terminal Decline
This article was published February 13, that is, it was written before the Pakistani terrorists hit India on one border and Iran on the other*, which just reinforced a major point of the story....
Consulting our second-favorite source of long price-series, Gregory Clark's
the years 1200-1914 using 26 component series: wheat, barley, oats, rye, peas,
beans, potatoes, hops, straw, mustard seed, saffron, hay, beef, mutton, pork,
bacon, tallow, eggs, milk, cheese, butter, wool, firewood, timber, cider, and
honey. I also construct sub-series for arable, pasture and wood products. The
main innovation is in using a consistent method to form series from existing
published sources. But fresh archival data is also incorporated. The implications
of the movements of these series for agrarian history are explored.
we see the first appearance of saffron prices in the year 1265 at 11.09 shillings/lb.
That same year Clark gives a price for wheat of 0.47 shillings/bushel so saffron was exceedingly expensive: one lb. of saffron costing as much as 23.6 bushels of wheat.
That's on page 36 of the 109 page PDF.
Fortunately for saffron lovers the price dropped to 4.39 shillings/lb. [12 oz., see below] in the year 1286.
The next big price move was from 4.00 shillings/lb. in the year 1348 to 18 shillings/lb. in 1351 which sure looks like the signature of the Black Death.
If one is interested, the big daddy of price series' is "A History Of Agriculture And Prices In England, From The Year After The Oxford Parliament (1259) To The Commencement Of The Continental War (1793)"
—J. E. Thorold‐Rogers, 7 volumes, 1866-1887.
Thorold-Rogers points out that saffron was cultivated in England and among other fun facts:
- Page 375
Saffron was largely cultivated in England, especially in the south-east, but it will be convenient as before to deal with this article when comment is made on spices.
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Page 659
Saffron. It is convenient to deal witji this article here, though it was not unfrequently of English growth, as the accounts specify. This drug or spice is nearly as common in the accounts as pepper is, I have estimated it by the apothecaries' pound of twelve ounces, by which, as the internal evidence of the entries proves, it was always sold. Our ancestors believed that the drug was a protective or prophylactic against the plague, and probably the price rose and fell as those who could purchase the article were alarmed at the contingency of a visitation from the deadly and dreaded disease which was from time to time endemic in England after the year 1349. I cannot, however, trace such an cflTcct on the price of saffron during the years 1477-8-9, i486, 1508, 1521. 1545. 1555-6. "577. and 1579, io each of which years some one account or the other (see Notes, Political and Social, u u 3
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Page 660
The price of saffron, before the general rise occurred, s highest in 1531-40, one of the decades in which foreign spico are so dear. Saffron was never, I imagine, imported fnw the East. But it doubtlessly was from south-eastern Europe and may have been indirectly affected by any cause Kbid made other spices dear. It does not rise in price to an)tliii| like the same extent, after 1541, that other articles do, ti increase in money value being under fifty per cent. NordM it seem to have been so extensively used in later times.
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Page 660
Saffron was grown in England, especially in the eastcR counties, Harrison tells a story to the effect that in one yol there was an exceedingly plentiful crop of the article, and tMt the growers, embarrassed by abundance, vented their discontett in a coarse and profane comment, and that thereupon tb^ were visited with a general scarcity of the article. I haiB found saffron designated as English in 1467, and bought ^ parently at a cheap rate. In 1557 some is bought which il designated as best, and in 1499 the Grantchcstcr safTrcnground, belonging to King's College, is let at a rental i 28j. 4^. a year. This must have been a plot which "tm stocked with the bulbs. It is very probably the case that th cheaper saffron was of English growth. I find no infonnatioi as to the origin of foreign supplies.
