TPP has been in southern India twice. In this region the cashew is an important crop, but you can't buy any in the local markets; cashews are too valuable as a cash crop export, one of India's 4 top agricultural commodities(the others being tea, spices, and basmati rice). Here in North America and in Europe the cashew is a much favored nut. Just watch and see how many people pick out the distinctive nut from a bowl of mixed nuts. At this great distance it is hard to know about the human misery caused by this crop. First, the cashew is a funny looking fruit; it looks like the seed is outside the fruit handing below the seedless "cashew apple". The fleshy accessory fruit is very tasty, sort of like a mango to which it is related, but they are soft and not exported or shipped to temperate markets. The asymmetrical "seed" is actually the whole fruit, a sort of hard drupe with a leathery outer layer and a hard inner layer, a "shell", surrounding the cashew embryo which is what you eat. This is where the hard, hand-labor part comes in, de-shelling the "nut". Now here's the other thing to understand. Cashews are in the Anacardiaceae, the sumac family. So did you think poison-ivy? Mangos are also in this family, a fleshier drupe, but the pitted seed still has the same asymmetrical shape. The sap that oozes from the fruit stalk gives TPP the same itchy rash as contact with poison ivy. The women who crack the cashew pits to release the nut suffer from the continual occupational exposure to these toxic oleoresins, and for near starvation wages. Why hasn't someone invented a shelling machine, something like the "crackers" used for pecans and walnuts in the USA? The answer is that India has so much cheap labor available there is no demand for a machine that would put thousands out of work. Yet boycotting cashews won't do much good. Middle men make the most money, but if demand for cashews drops, then near starvation becomes starvation. So far there doesn't seem to be any "fair trade" cashews, and it TPP is wrong about this, please let us all know.
in The Greenhouse
5 comments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKOa1d_FP8g
There are a few Cashew Nut Shelling Machines http://youtu.be/9hYBNGtuuPo
You can see the whole process as it is done in Ghana:
http://youtu.be/Ky8omUFpxVI
So much work for our snack!
Susan, that was great! Women'
s cooperatives. And those processing the nuts were wearing latex gloves! TPP was so close to one of these places, he's so annoyed he didn't discover them at the time. Thanks.
Roger's videos are great too. Ghana is a fairly new cashew producing competitor for India, but it looks like they are doing it the right way rather than exploiting cheap labor.
"Yet boycotting cashews won't do much good. Middle men make the most money, but if demand for cashews drops, then near starvation becomes starvation." Thank you for stating this economic reality-a fact that many forgot when they boycotted quinoa a few months ago.
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