 |
The Cashew Development Project supports Government’s initiatives to accelerate the pace of agricultural growth through promoting the expansion in area under cultivation and the production of raw cashew nuts and processed kernels in high potential areas, developing rural infrastructure, encouraging private sector initiative, facilitating access to agricultural technology in cashew production and processing, increasing access to rural finance, diversifying agricultural production thereby encouraging the domestic and export markets, and building human resources and institutional capacity at the grassroots.
Project Rationale
Farmers in the savannah and the transitional zones of the country have discovered that cashew being a tree crop grows well and requires very little inputs and management. It has also been discovered that cashew grows well in dry areas and on soils unsuitable for most staple crops such as rice and maize. These attributes of cashew coupled with favorable world market prices and the ready market for raw nuts and kernel have attracted the attention of the Government and farmers for income generation and foreign exchange earnings. An increase in the production and processing of cashew would have a positive impact on the national economy, strengthen the diversification of agricultural production, generate employment, enhance environmental conservation and management, and thereby contribute, significantly, to poverty reduction in Ghana.
The project is organized around 4 major components: Production Development, Credit, Extension and Training, and Project Management.
Project Area and Beneficiaries
The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) have selected ten districts in five regions of the country for the implementation of the project. These are: Upper West Region (Nadowli and Jirapa/Lambussie Districts), Northern Region (Bole, West Gonja and Yendi Districts), Brong-Ahafo Region (Wenchi, Jaman and Kintampo Districts), Volta Region (Nkwanta) and Greater Accra Region (Ga District).
The districts were selected based on the following criteria:
-
Location in a major cashew production/processing area
-
Potential for expansion due to the availability of land
-
High levels of rural poverty
The primary beneficiaries of the project are the present and potential smallholder cashew farmers and processors. These are the subsistence operators who grow food for their households and market the marginal surplus for cash income. To date, the project has reached more than 23,000 beneficiaries (twenty three thousand) small-scale cashew producers and facilitated the establishment of at least 4 processing units.
THE TEAM