An ambitious target has been set for India’s cashew sector by the Cashew Export Promotion Council of India (CEPCI), which has drawn up a programme to push annual exports to 275,000 tonnes by 2020, an increase of 120 per cent.
CEPCI was established by the Indian Ministry of Commerce to promote exports, and recently launched its Vision 2020 plan that hopes to send the country’s cashews to about 120 countries, reported the Business Standard.
“We are exporting cashew kernels to 60 countries around the world and want to double this number in the next one decade,” said of G Giridhar Prabhu, CEPCI’s former vice-chairman and head of its new Mangalore office.
“We are in the process of preparing a country-specific export plan to achieve our goal. The detailed approach document will be prepared in the next one year, which will help us devise strategies for increasing exports.”
India is currently exporting 125,000 tonnes of cashew nuts each year, and grows slightly over half a million tonnes, with an equal number of imports.
The required boom in production, which will need to reach bout 1.9m tonnes of raw nuts to hit the export target, will come from increased planting of high-yield varieties, and the adoption of better growing practices and technology.
“We should make efforts to increase the productivity from the present 900kg per hectare to at least two tonnes per hectare by planting high yielding varieties and good input management,” said Mr Prabhu.
“The National Research Centre for Cashews (NRCC) has come out with certain varieties to achieve high yields. We should grow cashews as an orchard crop and not as a wasteland crop to increase the productivity.”
India’s cashew sector has been allocated significant government funds under the aegis of the National Horticulture Mission, according to Mr Prabhu, and about 15m hectares of wasteland is available for cashew plantations.
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