November 25, 2019

Eat This Podcast: Cashews, the World Bank, and Mozambique

Hello

After the previous episode on how capuchin monkeys find their food, a few of you told me that you hadn’t known how difficult and dangerous it is to get cashew nuts. Not for us, of course; we just buy a little bag of them. But most of the women who process the nuts to fill those bags suffer permanently damaged fingers, burned by the acid that protects the cashew.

Mozambique was once the world’s top producer of cashew nuts, and the women who worked there enjoyed better than average conditions. In the aftermath of the civil war there, however, the World Bank stepped in with a rescue package and a cashew nut policy that destroyed the industry.

Here’s that story.

All the best

Jeremy