Photo credit Emily Clark for the Daily Mail As you might expect, there is biodiversity in the cashew family in its native land, too, with other species such as anacardium humile still grown and eaten across the Cerrado region of Brazil: a product which has boarded the Ark of Taste. And while global product focuses on the nut, the fruit it grows from is still used to make a wide variety of foods and drinks in Brazil. Indeed, the word cashew derives from the Tupian languages of South America, where acaj ú means “nut that reproduces”. To further emphasize the effects of globalization, how about a little quiz-which of three countries we’ve talked about is the cashew nut native to? Answer: none of the above! In fact, the cashew is native to the tropics of the Americas, from Central America and the Caribbean to northeastern Brazil. As a result, the country is incentivizing the local processing of the nuts, and we can easily imagine what sort of conditions and wages await the workers employed in this growing industry. Most of these nuts are exported raw to India and Vietnam for processing, so we may be tempted to think that at least workers here are spared the burns and skin boils in the processing countries.īut the story is not so simple: a significant fall in global prices has seen these same importers withdraw from contracts, with consequent impact on the hundreds of thousands of people who make a living growing cashew nuts in the Ivory Coast. The Ivory Coast has witnessed an incredible rise in cashew nut production over the same period of time: up from 280,000 tons a year in 2007 to 761,000 tons in 2018, according to Asoko Insight. The global economic crisis of the last 12 years has pushed prices down even further. Once again, the true price of cheap imported products in Western supermarkets is paid elsewhere, and dearly, by workers in the Global South. Gloves would slow their shelling down, and they are paid by the kilo.”Īll this for less than €3 a day. Many don’t even get gloves, and if they did, they probably couldn’t afford to wear them. They are employed without contracts, with no guarantee of steady income, no pension or holiday pay. ![]() “Burns are a fact of life for up to 500,000 workers in India’s cashew industry, nearly all women. In India meanwhile, the Daily Mail reported last year how, ![]() All this for “a few dollars a month”-all to ensure the lowest export prices possible to supermarkets in the West. Why might they refuse to work? Because the anacardic acid present in the fruit that cashew nuts grow from is caustic, and burns the skin. In Vietnam, reports going back as far as 2011 from Human Rights Watch and reported by Time suggest that drug addicts in forced-labor ‘rehabilitation’ camps are engaged in the production and processing, and “those who refuse to work are beaten with truncheons, given electric shocks, locked in isolation, deprived of food and water, and obliged to work even longer hours”. The industry in each country, however, is marked by dangerous conditions and poverty-line wages for workers. Over half of the world’s cashew new production is concentrated in just three countries: Vietnam, India, and the Ivory Coast. Why? Perhaps because if we knew what pain and misery lies behind our healthy snacks, we might not feel quite as content eating them. ![]() Though the potential risks involved in cashew production are mentioned, once again the focus is squarely on the possibility of danger (or lack thereof) to the consumer, and the people who pick these toxic nuts are obscured. Because raw cashews are processed in such a careful and meticulous way, it’s rare that someone will accidentally consume a contaminated nut.” Photo credit Emily Clark for the Daily Mail “Cashews themselves aren’t toxic, but they are surrounded by a shell that consists of the toxic oil urushiol… Coming into contact with urushiol can cause itching, blisters, and skin rashes. What you notice in these articles is an almost total lack of discussion on the production of cashew nuts-and there is nothing particularly unusual in this mystification of our foods’ origins-though one blog does come close to touching upon an aspect of cashews that should make you think twice before buying them again: The same trends have also led to a massive rise in demand for cashew nuts ( anacardium occidentale), and the internet is awash with blog posts that praise them for their health benefits. Demand for the latter has exploded in recent years, driven by partly a rise in lactose intolerance, healthier dietary habits, and also, increasingly, by veganism. As has been discussed both here and elsewhere at length, there’s a hidden world of environmental destruction and human misery behind some of the most in vogue food products in the Global North, from avocados to almonds.
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