Cashing in on cashew

India is one of the largest exporters of cashew kernels in the world but the industry faces an acute shortage of raw cashew  within the country, says KS Verma

India is the largest producer, processor, exporter and the second largest consumer of cashew kernels in the world. The country exports cashew kernels to more than 60 countries in the world, including the US, Netherlands, UK, Germany, Japan, Australia and the UAE. In 2002-03 its exports brought home foreign exchange equivalent to Rs 2,014.77 crore from export of 1,27,227 MT of cashew kernels. The industry provides employment to more than 5 lakh people, most of them in the rural areas. In the cashew   processing factories, over 95 per cent of the  workers are women from the lowest strata of the  society .Thus, apart from its economic significance, the cashew industry has the potential to play a leading role in social and financial upliftment of the rural poor.

Even though Brazil is the home of cashew, India realised its commercial potential and nourished it into a widely traded commodity. The Indian exporters were the first to evolve the commercial specifications for cashew globally and hence all the existing international specifications closely follow the one set by India. Quality complaints against Indian cashew are very rare if at all there are any. The quality paradigm has undergone quantum shifts in recent years because of global concerns due to bio-terrorism and health, and the Indian cashew industry is gearing up to meet the emerging challenges. One of the major problems that the Indian cashew industry faces is the acute shortage of raw cashew nuts produced within the country. All the units in India put together have a processing capacity of over 10,00,000 MT of raw nuts per year, but the domestic production is less than 5,00,000 MT per year. Therefore, India resorts to import of raw nuts for processing and exports. During the year 2002-03 India imported 4,01,199 MT of raw cashew nuts from different countries resulting in a foreign exchange outflow of Rs 1,230.60 crore.

In India, cashew is mainly grown in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Goa and Tamil Nadu. Some quantity is also grown in states like Tripura, Meghalaya and Madhya Pradesh. The processing and exporting activities are concentrated in Kerala followed by Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Cashew is essentially an agricultural commodity and the production is subject to the vagaries of nature. Hence in order to ensure a steady supply of raw cashew nuts domestically, a minimum production level has to be ensured. This can be achieved only by extension of cultivation to different geographical regions, utilisation of varieties suitable for different agro-climatic conditions and also varieties resistant to vagaries of nature, pests and diseases. If the production is increased to 2,000 MT per hectare, cashew cultivation can be as profitable as any other plantation crop like rubber, coffee, tea and cardamom, especially due to the fact that cashew can be cultivated even in wastelands. One prerequisite is that a sufficient number of grafts are to be made available to the farmers to meet their replanting and area expansion programmes.

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