Pepper & spices

Dried berries of a tropical vine, the classic spice of the old trade routes, now grown mainly in Vietnam, India and Brazil.

Softs · No. 103

• Not on a critical list
• HHI 1,378 · unconcentrated

Pepper once enriched long-distance merchants; today Vietnam grows over a quarter of it, after planting vines at a furious pace.

Chart: Illustration: Pepper & spices

Where it comes from

Chart: Map of where it comes from

Black pepper is the berry of a tropical climbing vine, trained up poles or trees and picked by hand, mostly by smallholders. Output was 933,000 t in 2024.

Three things to know

1. World pepper output more than tripled between 1990 and 2024, from 288 to 933 thousand tonnes, mostly after 2010.
2. Spices made up 66% of the Comoros' exports in 2013-2017, a textbook single-commodity economy.
3. India leads pepper-code exports with 29.3% because the trade code lumps black pepper with dried chillies and paprika.

The journey

1. 1 VinesTrained up poles or living trees
2. 2 PickingBerry spikes picked by hand
3. 3 DryingSun-dried black, or skinned for white
4. 4 CleaningCleaned, graded and steam sterilised
5. 5 GrindingGround, blended and packed

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