We are planning 2 million jobs in 4 years – Cashew farmers

President, National Cashew Association of Nigeria, Tola Faseru, in this interview, said Nigeria urgently requires agricultural revolution with strong focus on research and development. He added that with N50 billion intervention fund, the association can provide 2million jobs in the next four years. Excerpts: What is your take on cashew as a major agro commodity?  […]

President, National Cashew Association of Nigeria, Tola Faseru, in this interview, said Nigeria urgently requires agricultural revolution with strong focus on research and development. He added that with N50 billion intervention fund, the association can provide 2million jobs in the next four years. Excerpts:

What is your take on cashew as a major agro commodity? 
Cashew is a commodity that has immense potentials and we are trying to convert the potentials into reality. The issue is how we can add value to benefit our people. Cashew, in the year 2013, was named as one of the transformational crops under the transformation agenda of the federal government. That, for us, was a major one because it puts cashew on a spotlight.
Lately, it was also named as the 13th commodity which the government is looking at to diversify the economy. A lot of people have keyed into it. We have seen expansion across the value chain. More exporters are coming into the business; cashew has generated more foreign exchange for the country. Cashew has a wide spread across the country. That means it can actually touch the common man across the landscape of the country. 
Do you think Nigeria has the right value chain that can tap the potentials in cashew? 
One of the things we have done is to project the image of Nigerian cashew. We tried to do that by traveling all over the world, to rebrand the Nigerian cashew. That has done the magic because in the last two years, we have seen cashew sell, we have seen a lot of interest in cashew. In fact, by July we have almost sold what we sold last year. The value of cashew is increasing; an average farmer is earning at least four times what he was earning five or six years ago. One of the things we have done to extend the value chain is the training we organize for them to prevent post-harvest losses. Before now, we were having 300 kg per hectare but now we are having half a ton per hectare.  
What is the position of the country in the cashew international market in terms of export volume? 
Today Nigeria is number six; we have India, Ivory Coast, Vietnam, Tanzania, Guinea Bissau and Nigeria. One of the areas we are focusing on now is to increase our cashew production. I can see the production really increasing in the next two years. I see our position changing very fast, at least to number four in the next four years. 
With the ready made market for cashew, what are the specific challenges facing farmers, exporters and other people in the value chain? 
Basically, the key area is that there is increase in demand. Among the nuts, cashew is steadily consumed, from India, Europe and America to the Middle East. In the next 10 years, we want to produce and process more. So, what can make that happen is that we are looking at better infrastructure to support processing, to support shaking cashew factories. 
In what way can the federal government partner your association to reduce unemployment? 
Today, I can tell you in a very assertive manner that cashew provides a living for over 300,000 families across the country. Our agenda is to see more cashew industries coming up and what can make that happen is the availability of funding. We are calling for the establishment of cashew development fund that will help us to have more processing and production done.
The federal government should set aside N50 billion cashew fund to be accessed by farmers. This will change the numbers and cashew will be a major game changer for the Nigerian economy. Our vision is to provide two million jobs across the value chain in the next four years.