Cash for Cashews: Does It Add Up?

Abstract

Starting in the 1960s and 1970s, but especially since the 1990s, cashew production has boomed in Guinea Bissau. It has been encouraged by the World Bank, the Guinea Bissau government, European and American development agencies, various NGOs, and experts everywhere, in keeping with development discourse and the neoliberal growth narrative. However, as cashew production has increased, rice production has declined: rather than growing their own rice, people grow cashews to exchange for rice imported from Southeast Asia. Smaller rice harvests and dependence on world cashew prices are leading to food insecurity and social instability. Furthermore, cashews have taken over local ecosystems and once common plants and animals are disappearing. In other words, a self-sufficient, locally controlled, sustainable, environmentally friendly subsistence economy has been turning into an unsustainable, monoculture economy that depends on fluctuating global markets. The shift has brought about changes in social organization, gender relations, and religious activities and is wreaking havoc on the environment. (154)