The harvester's labor is the origin of the whole chain — and they're last to benefit.
For centuries, the myrrh trees of eastern Ethiopia's Somali region have offered their resin to a world that rarely looks back toward the cracked earth where it originates. Now, a historic drought — compounded by climate change — is silencing the seedlings before they can grow, while the harvesters who tend these ancient trees earn as little as $3.50 per kilogram for a substance that perfumes the wrists of those who spend $500 on a bottle. Researchers have arrived not merely to document a collapse, but to ask whether the chain connecting this landscape to global luxury markets might be redrawn before both the trees and the communities around them disappear.
- Rains have failed for years across Ethiopia's Somali region, and the myrrh trees that have anchored local livelihoods for generations are producing less resin while their seedlings die before they can take root.
- The economic wound runs as deep as the ecological one — harvesters earn between $3.50 and $10 per kilogram while the perfumes their resin enters retail for up to $500, with most profit absorbed by opaque middlemen before it ever reaches the source.
- The poorest residents — those with no livestock, no alternative income — face outright destitution as harvests shrink, and a local elder warns plainly that the myrrh tree population itself is in decline.
- A research team from the University of Vermont, FairSource Botanicals, and Ethiopian regional institutes traveled to Afcadde to map the supply chain and document traditional harvesting practices that, unlike commercial methods, do not wound the trees.
- Researchers are now pushing to connect harvesters directly to buyers, bypassing the traders who capture most of the value — a race against time that the trees, and the people around them, cannot afford to lose.
In Afcadde, a remote corner of Ethiopia's Somali region, myrrh trees have been producing their ancient resin for centuries — supplying everything from Egyptian altars to modern luxury perfumes. But the drought that has gripped the Horn of Africa for several years running is threatening both the trees and the communities that depend on them.
The crisis is layered. Adult trees are still standing but yielding less resin. More troubling is what is happening below them: seedlings are not surviving, eaten by starving livestock or simply failing without rain. Researcher Anjanette DeCarlo of the University of Vermont, who led a recent expedition to the region, fears that without change, even the mature trees will eventually succumb. Nearby, a single functioning well draws herders from as far as 200 kilometers away — and the local headman ensures the animals drink before the villagers do.
The economic picture is equally stark. Harvesters earn as little as $3.50 per kilogram of resin, while perfumes bearing that same ingredient sell for up to $500 a bottle. Ethiopia collects no taxes on myrrh exports, and most resin is purchased by Somali traders before vanishing into a global supply chain that returns almost nothing to its origin. For the region's poorest residents — those with no livestock and no other resource — the resin is not supplemental income. It is survival itself.
What the research team found worth preserving was the harvesting tradition: communities collect resin from naturally occurring wounds rather than cutting into bark, a practice that protects the trees from pests and disease and has remained intact for generations. DeCarlo called it a method in balance with the trees — one that should be honored, not replaced.
The researchers left with a concrete aim: help harvesters access direct markets and cut out the middlemen who absorb most of the profit. Whether that intervention arrives before the tree population crosses a point of no return is the question now hanging over Afcadde.
In the Somali region of eastern Ethiopia, in a place called Afcadde, there are trees that have been bleeding quietly for centuries. The resin they produce — myrrh — has traveled from this cracked, sun-hammered landscape to the altars of ancient Egypt, to the wrists of people who spend $500 on a bottle of Tom Ford perfume, to the medicine cabinets of people newly curious about natural remedies. The trees are still here. But they are struggling, and so are the people who depend on them.
The drought that has settled over this part of the Horn of Africa is not an ordinary one. Rains have been failing for several years running, broken only by a destructive flood in 2023 that offered no real relief. Experts point to the changing climate as the cause. The land shows it: cracked earth, dwindling water sources, livestock that are thin and desperate. Herders travel as far as 200 kilometers to reach Sanqotor village, where a single well still holds water. When they arrive, the local headman Ali Mohamed watches hundreds of animals crowd around it. Guests water their animals first, he said. Then the villagers drink.
The myrrh trees themselves tell a complicated story. The adult trees are, for now, mostly alive — but they are producing less resin than before. The more urgent problem is the generation below them. Seedlings are not surviving. Some are pulled from the ground by children tending starving livestock nearby; the animals eat the young buds before the trees have a chance. Without rain, others simply fail. Anjanette DeCarlo, a sustainable supply chain researcher at the University of Vermont who led a recent research expedition to the region, worries that if conditions do not change, even the mature trees will eventually die.
Earlier this year, DeCarlo and Stephen Johnson, a resin expert who runs FairSource Botanicals, traveled to Afcadde alongside researchers from the Somali Regional Pastoral and Agro-Pastoral Research Institute. They were supported by the American Herbal Products Association and a nonprofit called Born Global. Their purpose was not simply to document the crisis but to understand the supply chain — and to ask whether the people doing the hardest work were seeing any of the money.
The answer, plainly, is no. A harvester collecting a kilogram of myrrh resin — roughly two pounds — earns somewhere between $3.50 and $10. The perfumes that resin eventually helps create, sold under names like Comme des Garcons and Jo Malone, can retail for up to $500 a bottle. The gap between those two numbers is not just economic inequality; it is the distance between survival and destitution for communities that have no other income source. Ethiopia collects no taxes on myrrh exports, and most of the resin is purchased by traders from neighboring Somalia before it disappears into an opaque global supply chain.
What the researchers found in the harvesting practices themselves was something worth preserving. Local communities collect resin from wounds that occur naturally in the trees, rather than cutting into the bark deliberately — a method that weakens trees and invites pests and disease. This traditional approach has remained unchanged for generations, and DeCarlo was direct about its value: it is in balance with the trees, she said, and it should be celebrated, not replaced.
Mohamed Osman Miyir, a local elder, was less celebratory about what he sees happening around him. Young trees are disappearing, he said. The population of myrrh trees is declining. He is deeply worried. For the poorest residents of the region — those who own no livestock and have no other resource — the resin is not a commodity. It is the only thing standing between them and nothing.
The researchers left with a clear goal: help these communities access direct markets, cutting out the middlemen who absorb most of the profit. Abdinasir Abdikadir Aweys, a senior researcher on the team, said the harvesters themselves expressed hope that a more direct path to buyers would mean better prices and something closer to a stable livelihood. Whether that hope translates into action — and whether it comes in time — is the question the trees, and the people around them, are waiting on.
Citas Notables
Traditional practice is in balance and protects trees. It should be celebrated.— Anjanette DeCarlo, University of Vermont researcher and expedition leader
We are deeply worried about the declining population of myrrh trees.— Mohamed Osman Miyir, local elder in Afcadde, Ethiopia
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
What's the thing about this story that doesn't fit neatly into a climate story or a trade story?
It's both, and neither fully. The drought is real and worsening, but the poverty was already there before the rains stopped failing. The climate crisis is accelerating something that was already broken.
The price gap — $3.50 a kilogram versus $500 a bottle — is almost too stark to be useful. Does it actually tell us anything?
It tells you where the value is being captured and where it isn't. The harvester's labor is the origin of the whole chain, and they're the last to benefit from it. That's not a natural law. It's a choice embedded in how the supply chain was built.
The traditional harvesting method — collecting from natural wounds rather than cutting — seems almost incidental in the story. Is it?
Not at all. It's the quiet center of it. The communities have been doing something right for generations, something that protects the trees, and no one in the global market has been paying them for that stewardship. They've been subsidizing the luxury industry with their restraint.
What does it mean that Ethiopia collects no taxes on myrrh exports?
It means the country itself isn't capturing value either. The resin leaves, the money follows it out, and the communities are left with the environmental cost and very little else.
The well scene — hundreds of animals crowding around it, guests watering their livestock before the villagers drink — what does that say?
It says the social order has reorganized itself around scarcity. Hospitality still holds, but it's hospitality under enormous strain. That detail carries more weight than any statistic about rainfall.
Is there a version of this story where the direct market access actually works?
Possibly. But it requires buyers in the luxury industry to care enough to pay more and trace where their ingredients come from. Some do. Most don't. The researchers are betting on the ones who might.