First Fairtrade Container has reached Rotterdam!

After years of preparations, early September the first container of FairTrade cashew has reached the port of Rotterdam. In the coming months more will follow out of Africa and reach the shelves of the retailers.

In the past years a number of cashew farmers were organized in Ghana, Burkina Faso and Benin and they became Fairtrade certified. However no market was found yet.

Early this year some crucial actors; retailers, roasters, importers, processors and farmers decided to team up and make it finally happen. A major achievement in a sector where joint efforts are hardly existing. FairMatch Support has been stimulating this joint effort, within the African Cashew initiative, a public private project, funded by the Bill&Melinda Gates Foundation.

Creating this joint effort was a major achievement, but to make it happen turned out to be the major challenge in the end. The cashew market is a very archaic market and loyalty between farmers, buyers etc hardly exists. Especially processors, traders and farmers are very much opportunity oriented and at the start quite some side selling and buying took place. A lot of effort was put into keep all parties in line and a lot of mediation had to take place in price conflicts or denial of made agreements, especially upstream in the supply chain. It was clear, just creating the opportunity, organizing farmers, making the agreement was not enough. The major challenge was to keep them in line and to show them, staying in line would be more beneficial for them. The unexpected high prices in the harvest did not make it easier. Next to that some 'local issues' had to be tackles; Ivorian rebels did not allow the nuts to be exported to the processors...

But step by step the loyalty increased in the system volume that was collected was growing. We reached the agreed amount. More than 3500 farmers supplied the nuts and they will increase their cashew income with approximately 15%, and have created a new reliable outlet for their nuts.

With the lessons learned we will be ready for the next harvest, coming up in Mozambique in the coming months.

But first let us enjoy the new Fairtrade Cashew nuts, soon to be bought at the Albert Heijn shops in The Netherlands and probably other retailers as well.

Cashew, a beautiful nut with a story.