Grenada Rife With Spice of Life: Nutmeg

Once again Grenada is living up to its name as the Spice Island now that its nutmegs have come back into demand abroad.

Two years ago, Grenada was awash in nutmegs it couldn’t sell. Today, it can’t grow enough.

Growers produced bumper crops in 1981 and 1982, and succeeded only in driving down prices in a world mired in economic recession.

The pungent brown nuts used to flavor canned meat, doughnuts, eggnogs and rum punch piled up in warehouses, while discouraged farmers began to let them rot on the ground.

“We had two years’ production in stock--an alarming situation,” said Robert Renwick, general manager of the Grenada Cooperative Nutmeg Assn., which dries, sorts and markets the produce of the island’s 7,000 growers. “We were looking at the possibility of destroying those stocks.”

The economic tide shifted, however, and Grenada, the world’s second-largest producer of the nut after Indonesia, was faced with an entirely different situation. Meatpackers and flavor houses began to clamor for nutmegs, and only Grenada could meet their orders.

“Our market changed dramatically,” Renwick said, with Grenada producing 9,800 tons the last two years and selling 14,100 tons, thanks to its stocks.

Prices have risen to $3 a pound, according to the American Spice Trade Assn., and Renwick said delivery contracts already made indicate that prices will climb even higher next year.

Nutmegs and mace--the light orange spice that grows like lace on the shell of the nutmeg--fetched about $7.5 million this year, almost twice the income last year and a sizable sum for a country whose total operating budget is about $40 million. Nutmegs now rank ahead of cocoa as Grenada’s primary source of foreign exchange.

The nutmeg tree ( Myristica fragrans ), which grows to 75 feet at maturity, was introduced to Grenada in the middle 1800s by local planters returning from Indonesia, where they had been taken to help expand cocoa production.