Nigeria to begin exporting processed cashew nuts by 2019

[bonama]

After yams, cashews are next. The beauty of this is recognition of the shear difference in the price of primary farm produce and processed products.

Nigeria to begin exporting processed cashew nuts by 2019

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mr Audu Ogbeh, on Tuesday said that the country would start processing its raw cashew nuts for export by 2019.

Ogbeh made this known at the maiden edition of the 2017 First Bank Agric Expo in Lagos.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the expo is tagged: Reinventing Agriculture for Sustainable National Development.

According to him, the current worth of a tonne of roasted or processed cashew nut for export is $10,000 while the raw cashew nut is sold for $1,200.

He said it would be better to process the nuts for export instead of exporting raw cashew nuts in order to benefit from the high cost of cashew nuts.

“So in the next two years we will no longer export raw cashew nuts, but roast the cashew nuts for export.

“If we produce a tonne of roasted cashew it will be sold at the international price of $10,000, whereas a tone of raw cashew nuts sells for $1,200,” he said.

Ogbeh also said that Nigeria shipped a total of $600,000 worth of raw cashew nuts to Vietnam alone in 2016.

www.naij.com/amp/1093637-nigeria-export ... ogbeh.html

[MustyJ]

The market is hot going by this article (though about 7 months old). It means that the value of Cashew

Cashew Prices Are About to Go Nuts

Get ready for some cashew sticker shock.

The global popularity of the kidney-shaped nut has been growing faster than any other tree nut -- even almonds. Demand jumped 53 percent since 2010 and outpaced production in at least four of the past seven years, industry data show. Now the worst drought in a century for Vietnam, the largest exporter, is raising concern that supplies will be even tighter in a market valued at $5.2 billion.

A lack of rain in the once-fertile Mekong Delta and elsewhere in Vietnam has cut output of its major agricultural exports including rice, black pepper, coffee and seafood. This year’s cashew harvest fell 11 percent, and domestic prices jumped by as much as a third to an all-time high, a growers’ group estimates. That spells trouble for buyers in the U.S., by far the biggest importer.

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There’s been no year like this year,” Nguyen Duc Thanh, chairman of the Vietnam Cashew Association, said during an interview in Ho Chi Minh City. Prices probably will remain high until the next harvest arrives early next year, said Thanh, who has been in the industry for three decades.

While peanuts, which grow underground, are by far the most popular in the nut world, cashews have overtaken walnuts and pistachios in recent years to trail only almonds in the $30 billion market for tree nuts, International Nut and Dried Fruit Council data show. Global cashew consumption in 2014, the most-recent data available, reached a record 716,682 metric tons, up from 469,241 tons in 2010, council data show.

Rising demand, including from China and parts of Europe, helped spark a 70 percent jump in exports over a decade to 503,713 tons in 2014. A quarter of all shipments end up in the U.S., to be eaten as a snack or used to make foods like protein bars and cashew milk. India accounts for almost a third of global consumption and is the second-largest exporter. Ivory Coast ranks No. 2 in production, followed by Vietnam.

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Cashew trees usually are grown commercially in places where they can get a lot of rain and warm weather year round, like in southeast Vietnam. But over the past year, an unusual dry spell has left 2 million people in the country with acute water shortages and 18 of 63 provinces were in a state of emergency as of May, according to the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization. Losses in agriculture, a major source of export revenue, may prevent the economy from reaching the government’s growth target this year.

In Binh Phuoc province, home to more than half of Vietnam’s crop, 45-year-old Hoang Thuy Duong says he got just 8 metric tons (17,640 pounds) this year, compared with his usual average of 11 tons. The drought “has stunted many of my cashew trees, keeping them from producing buds, much less flowers,” said Duong, who has spent more than two decades farming 4 hectares (9.9 acres).

The domestic price of raw nuts has jumped to 52,000 dong ($2.33) a kilogram, the highest on record, from 38,000 dong at the start of the year, according to the cashew association.

Shelled Nuts

To be sure, Vietnam’s cashew industry isn’t completely dependent upon local farmers. About two thirds of what it processes was grown somewhere else. West Africa accounted for about 46 percent of the world’s cashews in 2015, and most of those nuts are processed in India, Vietnam or Brazil.

Processing is labor intensive. Trees produce an oval-shaped fruit called the cashew apple with a single nut on the outside. Once harvested, the shells are softened by steam and then cracked by hand. The kernels are dried, peeled and sorted by size and quality. Workers often coat their hands with oil to limit exposure to skin-irritating toxins in the fruit similar to poison ivy.

So, even with a smaller domestic crop, Vietnam’s exports probably will rise this year, partly because of a big jump in production from Ivory Coast. Vietnam may import about 800,000 tons of raw nuts in the shell this year, twice the amount grown locally, according to Thanh of the cashew association. While the country accounts for about 15 percent of global production, it supplied 58 percent of exports in 2014.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... am-drought

[Josh123]

The problem to me is is that there appears to be no organised cashew plantations around. I am used to seeing boys walk around picking the nuts from bushes to sell. This is worthy investment

[Yunan]

The problem to me is is that there appears to be no organised cashew plantations around. I am used to seeing boys walk around picking the nuts from bushes to sell. This is worthy investment

Those boys work for the agents since there are no organised plantations.

[Achi]

They better. The processed cashew earns far more than raw nuts. Exporting just raw materials has hardly developed a nation. Value chain is the way to go