Crisis: Vanilla Shortage May Affect Ice Cream Supply

This is much more serious than Marmageddon: Vanilla pod crops in Mexico and India have fallen so much that vanilla prices have jumped from $25 to $40 a kilo in a day.

Analysts have found that in Mexico, production of vanilla has fallen 90 percent in the past year. This has caused "panic buying," which Management Today reports "has now begun in earnest."

Madagascar vanilla is the only large source of the spice now, and 40 percent of the world's current stock just shipped out of Madagascar. And with the markets going crazy, analysts predict that one scoop of vanilla ice cream will cost 10 percent more. Just in time for warm weather, too.