Facilitating Smallholder Farmers’ Market Access

In the OIC Member Countries

roads are easily passable, to earn cash for school fees and farm inputs for the coming

planting season.

Most cassava traders in northern Mozambique move cassava, particularly dried cassava,

from low-cost zones to high-price markets in coastal cities. Regularly monitoring prices by

cell phone, traders identify the most profitable market destinations and take advantage of

opportunities for spatial arbitrage. Storage depots and warehouses are clustered at major

crossroads leading out of the surplus zones or on the fringes of large urban markets. The

owners of these storage depots, some of whom are also millers, are the major source of

financing for the cassava trade. These entrepreneurs profit from spatial price arbitrage

and from seasonal storage. As prices can swing as much as 100 percent between the dry

season lows and the rainy season highs (3–8 months later), seasonal storage is one of the

most profitable segments of the cassava value chain.

Rapid urbanization and changing dietary patterns are causing cassava consumption to

decline, while consumption of wheat- and rice-based foods has almost doubled since 2000

from 10 percent to 20 percent of staple food consumption. Even so, the increasing demand

for processed convenience foods implies that commercial opportunities will emerge for

cassava-based foods, feeds, and starches. Commercial production will require better

processing technology, however, including the mechanization of labor-intensive

operations (peeling, grating, and pressing) as well as technical work on the biochemistry

of cassava fermentation, food safety, and food quality.

ASHEWS

Mozambique was once a world leader in cashew production, accounting for 35–40 percent

of global exports.

In 1975 Mozambique exported about 22,000 tons of processed

(shelled) cashews and about 66,000 tons of raw (unshelled) cashews. In 2011 the export

figures stood at about 3,500 tons of shelled nuts and 36,000 tons of nuts with shell.

Mozambique’s export position declined for several reasons detailed here, including civil

conflict during the 1980s, export policy changes, failed liberalization of the processing

sector, the difficulties of intensifying production systems based on smallholder ownership

of trees, and rapidly expanding production in a number of competing countries.

Following independence in 1975, cashew plantations and processing plants were

nationalized. In 1978, raw cashew exports were banned to encourage domestic

processing. The ban reduced producer prices, and exports crashed. By 1990/91,

Mozambique was exporting only a small amount of processed cashews (about US$ 15

million), and by 1993/94, farmers’ share in export prices had declined to almost 15

percent. Reforms instituted in 1991 following the civil war included privatization of

factories and the National Cashew Institute (Instituto Nacional do Caju, INCAJU). Starting

in 1991/92, Mozambique exported limited quantities of raw nuts, but producers first had

to sell the raw nuts to processors. Although the government removed all quantitative

Donovan et al. (2011).

This section is primarily based on Aksoy and Yagci (2012) and African Cashew Initiative (2010).

FAO (2014).