Dorothee
Germany
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The newspaper ‘Südwestpresse’ now made an article about the enterprise ‘Fairgood’ which sells products made of cashew and mangos. Once the founder learned that most farmers in Nigeria hardly get by due to them getting forced by the buyers of their cashews to not peel the cashews themselves, but to instead send them to Vietnam where they get peeled faster and at lower cost via machine. So the Vietnamese receive a lot more money for just peeling these fruits within less than an hour, while the farmers are paid less for spending months taking care of the cashew plant. Plus this is not environmentally-friendly as the fruits are brought to Vietnam by plane just for profit and then move on from Vietnam to some other country where they get packed. Also most cashew farmers get forced by their bosses/ customers to grow them in monocultures which isn’t environmentally-friendly at all. Anyway ‘Fairgood’ encourages farmers to have plantations where both mango trees and cashew trees are mixed. Also they let the farmers peel the fruits themselves or hire other people from Nigeria to help peeling. Anyway the cashew nuts don’t leave the country to get peeled. Thus the farmers make a lot more money than they would have had they been forced to give away the unpeeled fruit. By the way: You may be surprised to read in any supermarket that they claim their cashew was made in Nigeria or Burkina Faso…and not Vietnam. They don’t have to mention where they had their cashew peeled. When the cashew tree stood in Nigeria for example they can say their product originated in Nigeria.
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