Of aging cashew nut trees and silver linings on dark clouds

Apart from poor husbandry, the drop in cashew nut production has also been occasioned by an increasing number of aging trees.

Farmers are not planting enough new trees and they have not embraced proper crop husbandry. The Coast region had 2.1 million trees in 2009 according to a cashew-nut-tree census and baseline survey carried out by Agriculture Business Development Today's Micro Enterprises Support Programme Trust.

The survey found that 20 per cent of these trees were unproductive and 73 per cent were in the economic productiveage of between 6-40 years. Trees aged between zero and five years were 240,501 and those between 6-25 were 783,449. Trees between 26-40 years were 753,712. This survey indicated that unless new fast-maturing trees were planted, the trees would not yield any nuts in a few years to come.

poor weather

In 2011-2012, about 200,000 seedlings that were developed with the support of the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, were distributed to the farmers but they were affected by poor weather, according to Cashew Nuts Growers Association Chairman John Mumba. This was part of a policy that sought to plant 200,000 trees every year.

Another 150,000 trees were provided in 2012-2013 but due to poor weather and lack of extension services, the results were not "not anything good to write home about", Mr Mumba said.

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The new cashew nut directorate, formerly the Kenya Coconut Development Authority, has mainly focused on coconut trees and players, saying it may take time before it can create structures for the cashew nut industry.

The county government of Lamu blames the low prices offered by processors on the crop's failure in the region. In 2009, then Agriculture Minister William Ruto slapped a ban on cashewand macadamia nut exports in a bid to encourage local processing following recommendations by a task force chaired by Mumba.

Lamu County Director of Agriculture Eric Mugo earlier this year said that the ban locked farmers out of the international market, which created competition and saw farmers fetch good prices.

"The prices that are being offered by numerous brokers are not sufficient to cause farmers to invest in their trees. Instead, they are cutting down trees for charcoal as they embrace other crops such as cotton and horticulture," the deputy governor said.

Existence of external markets for raw nuts led to an infiltration of briefcase buyers and exporters of the same. The competition led to dramatic price increases for the available nuts and in 2004, farm gate prices rose from as low as Sh25 to Sh80 per kilogramme.

But there is a silver lining in the dark cloud. Although Kilifi County, one of the main cashew-nut growing regions in the Coast region also suffers the problem of middlemen in the marketing chain, it has initiated a revival programme.

Kilifi Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries Executive Mwalimu Menza said that in this financial year, Sh20 million was set aside for up-scaling a two- pronged revival programme to rehabilitate old trees and plant new ones.

"We have engaged a consultant to design a Kilifi County cashew revival programme to provide a 10-year strategy. It is going to be a journey," Mr Menza said.

However, based on the low cashew nut production, the county, which once hosted the Kilifi Cashew Nuts Company, will not be able to go into processing soon despite providing between 30,000 and 50,000 new planting materials every year to boost production.

"We have been in discussion with both processors and farmers to structure marketing systems but with little success due to the presence of middlemen," Menza said. He added that the county would register and limit the number of agencies to enhance the quality of nuts.

Pius Ngugi, the chairman of Thika-based Kenya Nut, the country's oldest processor, said the existence of briefcase buyers was unsustainable since they do not focus on the production ofnuts and only appear when it was buying period.

Premature nuts

One of the negative effects of the 2004 demand for exported nuts was that the quality of nuts was compromised as farmers started harvesting and selling premature nuts. In fact, China pulled out of the market and imposed a ban on importation of Kenyan nuts due to low quality in 2005-2007. The prices of nuts went down to between Sh20 and Sh25 per kilogramme.

"The Government should create an environment where each processor is allowed to develop their own planting materials as has happened in horticulture," Mr Ngugi said.