The beautiful golden-colored nut that you can find in 2 1/2 pound tubs at Costco. The nut that you now see transformed into creamy milk and butter. You even find it in dairy-free cheeses that rival their cow-milk cousins. (So I am told, I have yet to try one but hear that ShriMu is a fantastic and delicious culinary discovery). A nut so expensive some might even pass it up...

The humble cashew.

There is good reason for the high price tag and here is how I know. 

We are cashew farmers.

About four years ago we purchased land here in Benin and planted cashew trees (Anacardium occidentale) on it. We are now starting to reap the benefits of that endeavor.  Flowers starting developing on our little four year old trees in late December, early January, and now we are seeing the fruits of their labor (no pun intended!). 

I know you are probably thinking - holdup, cashews grow on trees? Yep, they sure do!

Cashews are found at the bottom of what looks like an upside-down pear, known as the "cashew apple". The "apple" (aka a "false fruit") is edible and you can eat it straight from the tree, sucking the sweet but very dry juice right out of it. But don't get the clear juice on your clothes, it stains!

The juice from the cashew apple can be distilled into a liquor, and I just learned that the fruit itself can be boiled down with cinnamon and vanilla to make a delicious jam. 

Harvesting is fairly simple but time consuming. Not all of the cashews are ready at the same time, so we go out to the farm, about a one-mile walk, once a day to check the trees. This involves perusing the trees, searching for the "blueish-grayish" color, as Aden says, signifying their readiness. I have been told that once our trees are a bit older and are producing large quantities, you have to go out twice a day, once in the morning and the other at night, because that 12-hour time difference will be just enough to ripen the nut.

Now, cashews trees are not small once they are fully grown, and cashews grow on the entire tree. How do we reach those cashews that are high? Two options, climb or use a long stick to bat them down. It is very helpful when you have kids with you to do the climbing part!

If we do not go out to the farm often, people will come and steal the cashews. At present we do not have a fence or anything around the farm, so people will walk through it and if they see cashews that are ready they will pluck them for their own. 

We bring the cashews back to the house and detach them from the fruit. The nuts, still in the shell, are placed into a sack (gunny or rice bag). Once the bag is full, it is weighed and then either sold right away or stored until the price is right. As with all agricultural products, the price varies from year to year and even day to day. Right now you are able to purchase a kilogram of cashews (in the shell) for 250 CFA, roughly 50 cents. 

(For those who don't work in kilograms very often, 1kilo = 2.205 pounds.)

So, that is harvesting. Lots of time and having a keen eye to be able to spot the cashews when they are ready. 

And this is where we say goodbye to our cashews. We will sell them and they will travel to a factory where the complicated process begins of extracting the cashew nut or "kernel" from the shell. 

Here is a video Peace Corps Volunteers in Ghana at a small cashew processing facility where everything is done by hand.

Please note cashews are surrounded by a membrane that contains a toxin similar to poison ivy, so never stick a cashew nut still in the shell in your mouth! When I was in Peace Corps, another volunteer did just this and she ended up with blisters all over her lips - sometimes you have to learn the lesson the hard way I guess!

The second video a more automated cashew processing factory.

The process to remove the cashew kernel from the shell is as follows: 

* Steaming

* Drying

* Cutting

* Shelling/Cracking

* Drying (Oven)

* Peeling

* Sorting

You can see that a simple nutcracker won't work for this nut! I hope that you are beginning to see why this delicious nut is so expensive.

And the journey of the cashew is not even finished yet! It may head to a roaster or directly to another factory to be transformed into milk or another product.

D'Aquin and I had the opportunity to visit a nut roasting plant in northern California in 2017. They roast all sorts of nuts from all over the world, but we chose to visit this one because they source cashews from Benin. In fact, the plant we visited supplies Costco with its cashew nuts. I took a photo of a cashew container from Costco before we left - and you can see Benin is actually on there now! Pretty amazing really. 

West Africa is becoming one of the largest producers of cashew nuts, with the Ivory Coast producing the most of any region in 2019 (with Vietnam and India close behind). 

The dream for our cashews is to sell them directly to consumers one day - or even to sell directly to a company to use in their products. Farm to table if you will. How to make this happen, I am not sure, but we do have time to sort things out as our trees have a bit more growing time needed to really produce quantity amounts. Even starting a small coop would be intriguing. So many ideas!

One strange thing, I have rarely seen people actually eat cashews here. I have purchased them in Cotonou once or twice, but I have yet to eat a "cashew sauce" with la pate. I'm sure there is good reason for this, as cashews are a cash crop, and you can see from the explanation above, difficult to even get to the point where you can eat the actual nut. I would say money beats out time for consumption of this nut here! In a way, it is kind of sad - they should be able to enjoy some of the crop that they produce. 

The cashew really is one of the tastiest nuts, in my opinion. 

I will also just note here that on the cashew tree farm we also plant peanuts, chickpeas, and sometimes navy beans. 

There really is so much more to learn about cashews, so I have placed a link to read more about them (where they originated from, what the byproducts of cashew processing are, etc.). Click here!Maybe now you will look at a cashew differently when you eat it! 

Bon appetit! 

Just in case you missed the links to the YouTube videos of the cashew facilities…

Peace Corps Ghana - Cashew Nut Processing by Hand

Automated Cashew Factory in Ghana

How I keep up with US News!

The Morning Brew - "Awesome daily email that delivers the top business news in a way that's informative and entertaining!"

Marketplace - daily podcast "providing context on the economics news of the day" hosted by Kai Ryssdal

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit debrakouda.substack.com