A Story of cashews from Tanzania

We served our guests over Lunar New Year with cashews I brought back from Tanzania.   They are big and high quality.

Many people have never heard of cashew nuts from Tanzania, even though Tanzania is one of the largest producers of cashews in the world.  But you might have eaten cashews from Tanzania without knowing it.  It is because more than 90% of them are shipped in raw form to India and Vietnam to be processed.  

Why? It is because Tanzania lacks the facilities to process them.  The farmer receives little more than one US dollar per kilogram.  Yet in Hong Kong we pay roughly 20 US dollars for one kilogram.  The bulk of the profit goes to the Indian and Vietnamese traders and processors.  This time it is not the developed countries exploiting the developing countries; but one developing country exploiting another. 

Worse.  It leaves Tanzania at the mercy of the processing countries when there is a glut of harvests, or when the market shifts.  Apparently there was a big harvest last year and the usual Vietnamese buyers are not buying from Tanzania this year.  In the mean time, the storage facilities in Tanzania can only store the raw produce for one year.  So the country is some desperate to find buyers.  

Recently the country used its army to buy the products at a guaranteed price from its farmers, to ensure that the produce was not left unsold and subsequently spoiled in the countryside.  The country is also working hard to build processing plants.  For some reason it has not been very successful. 

Such is the plight of many developing countries.  It is not always a lack of resources.  But a lack of the technology, the infrastructure, the distribution channels and the business acumen to take advantage of the resources that are lacking.  

In the mean time, my stock of Tanzania cashews is stunning low and I need to go to Tanzania again.  I should learn to process and distribute cashews.