Trade issues

The trade in frankincense and myrrh is ancient, and already recorded in ancient Egypt. It was the principle source of wealth for Yemen, Western Oman, Northern Somalia and Ethiopia since at least 1000 BC and remained a prime export item until the late 19th century, when the colonial scramble identified new sources of (mineral) wealth, Western pharmacology started replacing traditional medicine, and ritual use in churches declined with secularization. Nonetheless, in the 1980s resins were still the second export item of Somalia (after livestock).

The most famous symbol of the fabulous wealth (and beauty) these resins brought is the Queen of Sheba, called Bilqis in Yemen, Makeda in Ethiopia and Arawelo in Somalia (according to the Somali archaeologist Sada Mire). Frankincense and myrrh were traded through the Indian Ocean and from there eastwards along the silk route and highly prized in Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medicine. They were also a source of great wealth for Nabataean traders, who plied the trade route along the Red Sea to the Parthian and Roman empires.

Today, however, the production of frankincense and myrrh brings very little wealth to producing areas. Stuck in a cycle of poverty, harvesting communities often sell the entire harvest in advance to local middlemen, who pay in food or cash (often around 2.5$/kg). As a result of these low prices, the resins sold are often dirty, full of bark (which is detrimental to the health of the trees) and unsorted. The middlemen sell the resins to traders in ports of the Gulf of Aden such as Bosaso and Berbera. These traders collect enough resins to fill a shipping container which they sell to merchants in Dubai, Djibouti or other regional ports. The hot weather along the coast often causes the resins to melt, causing evaporation of some of the precious essential oils and otherwise altering their chemistry.

It is in this poor condition that resins arrive after long sea routes on Western markets, where most distilling takes place. Western buyers do not have much choice to buy frankincense and myrrh of a better quality, with the exception of the superior (and expensive) Omani resins, which are well marketed. Since most resins are used to produce essential oils and Western consumers are unaware about quality standards for these products, the dirt, altered chemistry and mixed origin of the resins is largely ignored.

Sustainability issues

The worldwide population of frankincense trees is in steep decline. Although myrrh is less researched, mainly because it is less valuable in the perfumery industry, its global population is certainly threatened by the same factors, which are (Johnson e.a. 2025):

• overgrazing. Young saplings of these trees, which take 10-30 years to reach maturity, are eaten by goats and camels. Economic pressure lead pastoralists to increase the size of their herds, which they consider as a kind of bank account, while environmental pressure leads them to seek new pastures in the remote places where frankincense and myrrh trees grow. Thus the regeneration of these forests is stunted.
• climate change. Although the bursereceae family of trees, to which both frankincense and myrrh belong, is sturdy, climate-change induced extreme weather events such as cyclones and flooding are wreaking havoc on forests.
• clearing of land for agricultural or mining use.
• overharvesting. Although communities traditionally know how to harvest frankincense and myrrh in a sustainable way, the extremely low price paid to them for the resins frequently leads them to overtap their trees, weakening them.
• Pests such as the longhorn beetle. These occur naturally but climate change and the destruction of biodiversity, including the disappearance of their natural predators, make pests a more serious threat.

According to the table below, frankincense production in Northern Somalia is threatened mainly by over-exploitation and insects. Our personal observation, however, is that grazing also threatens the regeneration of frankincense and myrrh trees.

Armed conflict has disrupted the trade in frankincense and myrrh in some of the main production areas: Yemen, the highlands of Eritrea and Tigray, and Puntland. In fact this has provided some respite to the forests, notably allowing their regeneration  because people have fled production areas or traders avoid going there. Landmines, for example, deter shepherds from bringing their flocks and allow regeneration of the forests.

The presence of armed groups in frankincense and myrrh production areas poses another problem, as they usually levy taxes or otherwise benefit from the export of resins. Since several armed groups are listed as terrorist organisations, buying frankincense from these areas may violate international legislation. To circumvent this problem, several layers of middlemen serve to obfuscate the origin of resins, thus disculpating buyers in Western countries from breaking the law. This obviously has a negative impact on traceability in the sector.

Map and table reproduced with the permission of Bongers et al 2019: “Frankincense in Peril” in Nature Sustainability 2:602-610

The Essential Oils Industry is not Helping

You may think: if the demand for frankincense and myrrh is growing, and supply is limited, then surely the law of supply and demand means prices paid to producers will rise? But this is not the case. Local prices fluctuate (recently between 2 and 7$ per kg of resin) but overall, when corrected for inflation, prices have been dropping and are reaching unsustainable levels. In Yemen, for example, frankincense production has largely been abandoned.

Why? One must seek the answer in the essential oils industry. Raw resins are in increasingly low demand by consumers, who seek oils. The main end users of oils are perfumers, producers of cosmetics and the wellness industry. The first two user groups need a very stable product to maintain consistency in their own products. Since one batch of frankincense does not resemble another, these industrial users have become adept at rectifying, fractioning and reconstructing the molecular composition of the oils they use as base material. In consequence, they care less about the sustainable origin of the oils, which are doctored before use anyhow.

As to the wellness industry, it also seems to care little about the provenance of the resins that bring so much profit (see this 2024 article in The Guardian). Some of the major players are multilevel marketing companies (e.g. doTerra and Young Living) which operate according to a pyramidal scheme: sellers earn easier by recruiting other sellers and obtaining a percentage of their sales than from their own sales. The resulting pressure to increase volume while keeping costs low undermines transparency, fair trade and long-term stewardship in the sourcing of raw materials. Such companies are obsessed by profit, distant from the field and care less about their suppliers than traditional companies or individual traders (like 2Mages) who build their business slowly on personal relations.

Because frankincense and myrrh are collected in the wild, not from plantations, supply is not elastic, and sustainable harvesting and fair trade very difficult to monitor. This is exactly where 2Mages is different: like old-fashioned traders, we know our harvesters and nurture the best among them.

2Mages approach

These valuable ancient products, the communities producing them and end consumers deserve much better than what the current resins sector offers. 2Mages has a simple solution: pay the producers better, cut out most of the middlemen and offer much better products to buyers. Key to this solution is that seeking profit is a secondary objective to establishing sustainable trade networks.

Just about every essential oils company promises the same: care for nature, the producing communities and customers. But evidence shows that they primarily care about their own profits. Why would we be different? Because 2Mages is basically one person with his own life history and skin in the game; our first customers are all family and friends, so yes, we care about them. But he has lived among suppliers too, and has spent a lifetime observing misguided development projects and wishing he could do it differently. This is his chance. And his spiritual quest has led him closer to nature; he has not only skin but also soul in the game. And finally, he wants to set up a business that can help his children survive what may become rough times. There will always be a demand for these precious resins.

In Somaliland the situation seems ripe for this new approach. In past years, the trade in this country was nearly monopolized by a US essential oils giant of the multilevel marketing variety. Fake corporate social responsibility claims, predatory practices affecting both Somali women and the environment, and harvesting communities that were never even paid were exposed in a Vice News documentary and articles by the Guardian and Deutsche Welle.

The scandal led to the creation of the Beeyo Maal cooperative among Somali women involved in the trade, and ended up halting the company’s trade and embroiling it in ongoing litigation where harvesting communities are seeking to get paid for the resins they delivered. 2Mages has stepped into this newly created space hoping to establish new, fairer trade practices.