Nuts for Cashew: Achieving Sustainable Production in West Africa

Dr. Filipa Monteiro

Dr. Filipa Monteiro is a researcher at the Instituto Superior de Agronomia (LEAF/UL) at the University of Lisbon, Portugal. Her work focuses on the sustainable production of tropical crops in the West Africa region, specifically the cashew sector in Guinea-Bissau.

Due to the cashew nut being a high-market-value product, this crop is considered an export-oriented commodity, also known as a cash crop,,[1]^,[2], as well as a source of economic revenue at both the governmental and social levels. Over the past two decades, rising worldwide consumption of cashew nuts has led to increased global market demand, mainly driven by the rising awareness of nuts’ health benefits. World cashew production has traditionally been dominated by India and Viet Nam. However, nowadays the largest producing region is West Africa. In these countries, cashew is not only an important agricultural commodity, thanks to the fact that it significantly contributes to both gross domestic product and export exchanges at the country level, but also an essential resource for the livelihood of smallholder farmers. Given the global market demand and the lack of processing infrastructure, West African producers export most of their crops as in-shell cashew nuts to Viet Nam and India, the two largest cashew processors and the main suppliers of the world and European markets.

To meet economic needs, cashew has dominated the agricultural landscapes of West African cashew-producing countries. One example is Guinea-Bissau, a small country bordered by Senegal in the north and Guinea Conakry in the east and south, where cashew is a key agricultural commodity accounting for 90% of the country’s exports and having a direct effect on the household income of 85% of the rural population. In Guinea-Bissau, cashew was engaged as a commercial crop as a result of agricultural policies in the 1980s. The production boom of cashew nuts showed the highest average annual growth rates between 1980 and 2001.[3] Nowadays, old and low-productive monospecific orchards prevail, with no varietal selection and few management practices. At present, a large proportion of arable land in Guinea-Bissau is dedicated to this single cash crop, raising food insecurity issues. Also, despite the virtual absence of agrochemical inputs on cashew in most West African cashew-producing countries (including Guinea-Bissau) and the recognized organoleptic quality of the nuts, the value of this crop in international markets does not reflect these properties.

The West African cashew industry should be positively exploited within the scope of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the empowerment of smallholder farmers, creating revenues and employment opportunities through the promotion of small- to medium-scale industrialization processes, especially in rural areas. West African agriculture is at a turning point in terms of adopting a transformative approach towards inclusive growth and sustainable development.

Several strategies could be considered to achieve the sustainable production of cashew in West Africa:

• Crop diversification: Crop rotation and diversification should be applied in cashew cropping systems. This approach would provide crops for the domestic market, augmenting agrobiodiversity with positive social impacts (e.g., medicinal and edible plants) in addition to diminishing the risk of pests and diseases by changing the monoculture regime. As currently practiced, the monoculture regime poses a great threat to the long-run sustainable production of cashew. The close spacing between the trees (less than 3 meters, in contrast to the recommended spacing of 7-10 meters) prevents sunlight from penetrating the orchard and limits the possibility of crop rotation (Figure 1, top). Cashew agroforestry practices have been adopted with great success in several cashew-producing countries, including East Timor, where cashew is intercropped with edible beans that provide food to farmers while also increasing soil fertility and the diversity of the agroecosystem (Figure 1, bottom).[4]
• Improving crop productivity: High-yield and high-quality cashew varieties should be used in order to enhance yields per cropland area as opposed to expanding cropland. Such a strategy should be targeted to selecting the best-performing varieties in each country in terms of productivity, nut quality and caliber, as measured by phenotype characterization (using international cashew descriptors defined for nut standards), as well as in terms of the varieties best adapted to local/regional ecological conditions (genotypic characterization). The best-performing cashew varieties could be then conserved in situ and in a germplasm collection to ensure the maintenance of regional characterized varieties.
• Using analytical tools to comply with international food standards on cashew nuts: Producers should embrace the added-value opportunity to position cashews as an organic product with increased market value. Gaining access to chemical products to manage pests or diseases remains a challenge, in addition to the fact that most cashews are produced by small farmers in non-commercial orchards. This reality should be viewed as an opportunity to enter the organic market and to increase the value of cashew per kilo, given that current practices lead to low value for farmers. For example, the price for 1 kg of raw cashew nuts in Guinea-Bissau was 375 CFA (US$0.56) in 2023, down from 650 CFA (US$1) in 2018.
• Developing a structured agricultural business in the cashew sector, perhaps coordinated by African Cashew Alliance (ACA), by maximizing the use of co-products of cashew beyond the nuts, such as apple, for commercialization through a solid supply chain. The supply chain could include a continuum export market beyond the cashew harvest season (mainly between March-June) centralized by ACA and a regional plan could be adopted to develop infrastructure to enable these countries to export more than raw nuts. This approach would decrease the market volatility associated with cashew nuts being sold alone.

In West Africa, cashew is a case of a crop under agricultural intensification. It is currently in urgent need of secure guidelines for sustainable production in order to preserve biodiversity and maintain other ecosystem services (beyond cashew nuts), in light of the considerable heterogeneity of socio-cultural and technical conditions, farmer typologies and production objectives that characterize African smallholder agriculture.

[1] Monteiro, F., Romeiras, M. M., Figueiredo, A., Sebastiana, M., Baldé, A., Catarino, L., & Batista, D. (2015). Tracking cashew economically important diseases in the West African region using metagenomics. Frontiers in Plant Science, 6, 482.

[2] Monteiro, F., Catarino, L., Batista, D., Indjai, B., Duarte, M.C., Romeiras, M.M. (2017). Cashew as a high agricultural commodity in West Africa: insights towards sustainable production in Guinea-Bissau. Sustainability, 9, 1-14.

[3] Monteiro, F., Catarino, L., Batista, D., Indjai, B., Duarte, M.C., Romeiras, M.M. (2017). Cashew as a high agricultural commodity in West Africa: insights towards sustainable production in Guinea-Bissau. Sustainability, 9, 1-14.

[4] Guterres, L., Duarte, M. C., Catarino, S., Roxo, G., Barnabé, J., Sebastiana, M., Monteiro, F., & Romeiras, M. M. (2022). Diversity of Legumes in the Cashew Agroforestry System in East Timor (Southeast Asia). Foods (Basel, Switzerland), 11(21), 3503.