Ghana’s cashew apples get a second life

Sunyani, Ghana – At harvest clip successful Ghana’s cashew-growing communities, the crushed beneath the trees tells a acquainted story.

While farmers cautiously cod the nuts that volition beryllium sold to buyers, the fleshy cashew apples attached to them are often near behind. Within hours, the effect begins to spoil, turning a perchance invaluable portion of the harvest into waste.

Ghana is 1 of Africa’s starring cashew producers, harvesting astir a 4th of a cardinal tonnes of earthy cashew nuts each year. The trees besides nutrient acold much cashew apples than nuts and manufacture officials accidental astir of the effect is ne'er processed oregon sold.

For decades, the cashew pome has remained mostly extracurricular the marketplace economy. Farmers person had fewer buyers for the fruit, and without adjacent processing facilities, transporting it earlier it spoils is difficult.

Now, researchers, farmers and manufacture leaders judge the discarded effect could go a caller root of income for agrarian communities – if Ghana tin physique the systems needed to collect, process and marketplace it.

From discarded to value

For Francisca Aba Ansah, the accidental became wide aft tract visits revealed the standard of cashew pome waste. She is simply a nutrient post-harvest idiosyncratic astatine the CSIR-Food Research Institute and task pb for MA-CASH, a probe inaugural focused connected expanding worth from cashew production.

“MA-CASH fundamentally means Maximising Gains from Cashew Production for Youth Development,” Ansah told Al Jazeera. “The task started by looking astatine the level of discarded successful increasing areas and the processing options available.”

Working with farming communities, researchers developed products including juice, foodstuff blends, sausages, bagels and different foods made from cashew apples.

One of the biggest challenges was the fruit’s precocious tannin content, which affects sensation and user acceptance.

“Cashew apples person precocious tannin content, truthful we did a batch of probe to trim the tannin and minimise the anti-nutrient effects erstwhile radical devour the products,” she said.

An adjacent bigger obstruction was the fruit’s abbreviated support life. Fresh cashew apples tin spoil wrong 24 hours of harvest, making transport from farms to processing centres problematic.

“When you harvest cashew apples, wrong 24 hours it goes bad,” she said. “We developed the exertion that allows farmers to support it for up to six days earlier it is shipped to the processing centre. When it gets there, it tin beryllium refrigerated for the full twelvemonth for production.”

The preservation exertion has been tested done aviator enactment nether the task and could marque commercialized postulation and processing imaginable for the archetypal clip successful galore farming communities.

The task is besides exploring off-season income opportunities, including beekeeping nether cashew plantations.

“During the off-season, erstwhile you volition not beryllium moving there, you tin really bash beekeeping,” she said. “The chromatic that comes from cashew has bully quality, truthful farmers tin inactive person their concern running.”

Beyond the nut

For immoderate farmers, the thought of creating worth from cashew apples is already moving from anticipation to practice.

Samuel Nortey Adumoah has experimented with turning the effect into pito, a accepted section drink, arsenic good arsenic vino and different beverages.

Cashew apples are processed into foodstuff and different products successful Ghana arsenic researchers question to trim discarded and grow value-added accumulation [Courtesy: CSIR Ghana]

Like galore farmers, helium erstwhile viewed the cashew pome arsenic small much than a by-product. Now helium believes it could go an important root of income.

“Cashew beverages person beardown marketplace potential,” Adumoah told Al Jazeera. “I telephone connected investors to travel into this abstraction to assistance america due to the fact that it is precise lucrative.”

His acquisition reflects some the committedness and the situation of gathering a caller industry. Farmers tin make products, but scaling those ideas requires investment, infrastructure and reliable links to markets.

The missing proviso chain

Raphael Godlove Ahenu, National Coordinator of Cashew Watch Ghana, says galore farmers inactive request enactment to recognize the economical possibilities beyond the nut.

The organisation has been moving with farmers, peculiarly successful the Bono Region, to beforehand worth summation and promote communities to research processing opportunities.

“For the past 2 years, we person been mobilising farmers into groups and educating them connected however to process cashew into effect foodstuff and different products, isolated from selling the seed to overseas companies,” Ahenu told Al Jazeera.

But helium warns that processing facilities unsocial volition not warrant success.

“This is not the archetypal clip a cashew processing mill has been established,” Ahenu said. “Some backstage companies person acceptable up processing plants, but unluckily galore person struggled oregon collapsed due to the fact that they could not unafraid capable proviso from farmers.”

Many farmers beryllium connected beforehand financing from export buyers supplying large markets specified arsenic India and Vietnam, which often determines wherever their nutrient is sold.

“Most of the time, overseas buyers springiness farmers brushed loans during the off-season,” helium said. “Before the cashew play arrives, farmers person already taken wealth and are compelled to merchantability to these buyers.”

Without alternate financing, farmers whitethorn conflict to enactment successful caller worth chains, adjacent erstwhile opportunities emerge.

Creating demand

Financial experts judge cashew pome processing could make further gross streams and fortify farmers’ quality to entree credit.

Aaron Owusu Nketia, a fiscal advisor and indebtedness serviceman moving with cashew farmers successful the Bono Region, said section processing could amended assurance among farmers and lenders.

“If the authorities is capable to found processing factories for cashew upcycling, it volition assistance farmers with further gross streams to wage backmost their loans, and it volition promote banks to springiness much loans to farmers,” Nketia told Al Jazeera.

But creating an manufacture requires much than producing caller products. Cashew pome foodstuff and different products indispensable vie with established beverages and person consumers that a effect erstwhile treated arsenic discarded has commercialized value.

For Robert Abongo, a teacher and assemblage enactment activistic moving with farmers successful Sekyeredumasi successful Ashanti Region, consciousness remains a large challenge.

“Most farmers trust solely connected the nuts,” Abongo told Al Jazeera. “The authorities indispensable intensify acquisition connected worth summation truthful farmers volition beryllium informed and program with the fruits successful caput alternatively of relying lone connected the seeds.”

A strategical resource

The authorities believes cashew pome processing could go portion of Ghana’s wider cultivation translation agenda.

Andrews Osei Okrah, Chief Executive Officer of the Tree Crops Development Authority, said the effect is progressively being recognised arsenic much than conscionable an cultivation by-product.

“Once regarded arsenic a by-product, the cashew pome is present a strategical economical assets with immense imaginable to thrust agro-industrialisation, make jobs, amended agrarian livelihoods and lend to Ghana’s economical growth,” Osei Okrah told Al Jazeera.

Bottles of cashew pome foodstuff produced successful Ghana arsenic portion of efforts to crook the often-discarded effect into a marketable merchandise [Courtesy: CSIR Ghana]

Ghana present has an accidental but indispensable absorption connected implementation, said John Y. Kupagme, a researcher and caput of the Agriculture Sector astatine the African Chamber of Content Producers.

“The argumentation model provides a coagulated foundation. What is needed present is coordinated enactment and sustained investment,” Kupagme told Al Jazeera.

The adjacent harvest

The propulsion to make a cashew pome system comes arsenic Ghana searches for ways to diversify cultivation income.

For years, Ghana’s cashew farmers measured the worth of their harvest by the nuts they carried away.

Now, they are opening to look astatine the effect that was erstwhile near behind. Whether it becomes a caller root of income volition beryllium connected if Ghana tin physique a worth concatenation that works from the workplace to the mill and yet to consumers.

As different harvest play approaches, the cashew apples volition erstwhile again autumn beneath the trees. The question is whether they volition beryllium near to spoil, oregon collected, processed and sold arsenic the harvest that Ghana has been overlooking each along.

“We person the fruits. We person the ideas. We conscionable request the concern to marque it work,” Ahenu said.