FEATURE… ‘Labourers not Landowners’: How Nigerian women miss out on wealth from cashew farming

With the harvest season for cashews over, 42-year-old Ayashina Idowu wiped the dust off her well-worn sewing machine to make iro and buba (locally crafted wrappers and blouses) and mend worn-out clothes for her neighbours.

She dragged the machine, its familiar weight pressing into her palms, back into the small house that doubled as her shop. It would take eight months before she returns to work long days as a labourer on a large cashew farm in Iloffa, a small town that serves as the headquarters of the Oke-Ero Local Government Area of Kwara State.

 

But for Idowu, owning her farm to harvest cashew nuts would have been better than picking for farm owners who pay her very little. Her father died, leaving no landed property in her name, and her brothers chased her away from their father’s land. This act, rooted in a system of patriarchy, is preventing many women from being stakeholders in the profitable cashew business in Nigeria.

“I pick cashew nuts for the farm owners,” said Idowu, gesturing towards a dried cashew nut left on the tree as we toured a farm.

Over the last decade, cashew farming had evolved into a multimillion-dollar agricultural enterprise in Nigeria. This has enticed many Nigerian farmers to indulge in what was once used primarily as a shade to sit under and, in season, as a fruit to consume.

Globally, Nigeria is the fourth largest producing fourth-largest producer of raw cashew nuts with an annual production of over 300,000 metric tonnes of cashews.

Foluke Olatoye, an agricultural economist at the Environmental and Economic Resource Centre in Ogun State, explained that cashew has metamorphosed into a cash crop in the 1990s, producing rural wealth, contributing to employment and foreign exchange earnings for farmers within the value chain.

“Cashew has a high export value and a strong resilience to climate change. With low maintenance, it flourishes in its season.”

A produce-buyer, who introduced himself as MK, operating in Ogbomoso, admitted that there are a lot of opportunities in the cashew value chain but mourned the fact that women are missing out because they do not have opportunities to own farms to engage in the most profitable hierarchy of the business.

According to the Development Research and Project Centre, women make up about 70 per cent of the workforce in the cashew processing sector, but they produce significantly less than men due to land ownership challenges

and other barriers. Despite their substantial contribution, cultural, religious, and financial constraints continue to limit their ability to own land. This lack of access not only affects their income but also leaves them with little to no decision-making power.

In the cashew industry, women are primarily smallholders, mostly engaged in farm labour and local processing.

There is currently no national policy on cashew that promotes economic opportunities for women in cashew production, processing, marketing, exporting and addressing the challenges and constraints faced by women in the industry. This limits the potential of women to advance in the value chain and contribute to the industry’s growth.

MK described how the cashew value chain is initiated at the lowest point. Farmers work on the crops. At harvest, the services of labourers are sought to pick the nuts, which are dried, and then packaged by his company. After this process, his company moves the raw nuts to exporters like Olam, an international agri-business, to ship out the cashew produce.

In Asia, Europe, and America, where it is processed, it is broken into two compartments: its shell and the nut. From the shell, biofuel and oil are produced likewise; the nuts produce edible oil, medicine and snacks amongst other things. Most of the farmers spoken to admitted to being oblivious of the innumerable products made from the crop.

“In 2024, we had more than 25,000 metric tonnes of turnover, and one tonne is two million naira. Just calculate it,” said Babatunde Dauda, the Chairman of the Nigeria Cashew Association of Nigeria, Kwara chapter.

“Cashew is our oil in Kwara,” said Dauda, who also mentioned that the farmers, who are mostly male, acquire the lion’s share of money locally.

“Women are usually in the business of picking up the cashew nuts and receiving daily wages,” he explained, stressing how women make the least from the value chain.

Beyond the influence of patriarchy, several women are hindered from acquiring landed properties due to financial constraints. Gbemisola Apanisile, an indigene of Iloffa, is one of such women.

For the past ten years, she has engaged in the practice, earning as little as

₦3,000 daily. Sometimes the farmers pay in kind, giving the pickers like Apanisile one-third of what they have picked.

According to Apanisile, she knows the farming procedure but lacks the financial capability to purchase farmland.

“We trek for long hours and pick these nuts one by one; it is very tedious,” she says, speaking of how difficult the job is. Her back hurts since the work involves bending for a long time.

Every season, women like Apanisile are often carried in large numbers to work as labourers on cashew farms in Eleyin, Osi, Kajola, and other rural communities within Kwara State.

“The money I obtain from this labour is not enough to sustain my children’s education,” the mother of six stated. The pay is essentially invested in her family’s feeding and shoe-selling business, she says as she turns towards her small collection of Crocs and slippers.

After spending the first four months of the year immersed in this labour role, “I made a hundred thousand naira,” she revealed. This is far less than a plot-wide cashew farmer who sells a tonne for two million naira.

Women’s pockets remain light in the prosperous industry

 Idowu, who earns around ₦15,000 per week, describes the physical toll the work takes on her. She finds some comfort in the fact that the cashew season, though short, offers a rare window to earn a living. “It’s only for about four months in a year that one can make money from this work.”

She laments the lack of support from all stakeholders for women to rise to high positions of power and large-scale ownership in cashew farming. “We have seen men uprooting the growing cashew trees and replanting them on their farms. This particularly happened to my friend who is a widow, because she has no defender,” Idowu said.

According to the Nigerian constitution, women are empowered to own property. Yet, in practice, unwritten cultural norms often override these rights, pushing women further to the margins. As a result, only 10 per cent of landowners in Nigeria are women, according to the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs.

Experiences of Disempowerment

Bose Adegoke, another cashew picker, works for her husband, Adegoke. Before now, Adegoke worked in Lagos until recently, when he returned to Omu-Aran, his hometown in Kwara State. Upon his arrival, he commenced the maintenance of the farmland he inherited from his father. Like many others, his father had planted a large number of cashew trees to keep his land and mark boundaries with other people’s lands.

Now, Bose, his wife, serves as a labourer on the farmlands.

“I only pick the nuts and do the packing, Daddy wa (my husband) carries the bags and deals with the produce buyers. So I don’t know how much we make from cashew,” she said with a smile not reaching her eyes. “I want to purchase my land and plant cashews there, but they will still be controlled by my husband.”

Landed properties are primarily owned by families or the government; however, the male descendants across Nigerian cultures usually obtain the land, leaving the female to her marriage. “They do this to ensure the land remains within the family. A woman will get married to a man who is her head. This favours the husband more than the father,” Akanni, a bikeman and farmer, said.

In Kwara, the cultural barrier thrives, incapacitating women from indulging in prosperity and asset ownership. Without a doubt, this barrier has minimised the national agricultural production, and its implications on women’s empowerment are profound, as discussed by these researchers.

Along the road between the Omu-Aran Medium Correctional Centre and Isanlu-Isin, cashew trees line the landscape. “Ninety per cent of the farms here are owned by men, so women and children only do the picking,” said Chief Tayo Ajide, the Obanla of Isanlu Isin and a cashew farmer. “Women’s work is not farming, but helping with labour”

He trailed off as he tried to figure out the next spot to plant a cashew seed. Every rainy June, he plants cashews for the expansion of his farm.

Due to its perennial nature, cashew farmers must wait four years before enjoying a bumper harvest. Chief Ajide also argues that women are not patient enough to wait that long. However, the chief’s assertion was dismissed by multiple women the reporter encountered in Isin, Oke-Ero, and Irepodun.

This highlights the strength of patriarchal values in the area, where men treat women like children, incapable, in their view, of caring about building wealth or making long-term investments.

‘Government is not supporting us’

 Despite having around 15,000 registered members spread across the 16 LGAs, there is a noticeable absence of support for cashew farmers in Kwara State. “The government is not supporting us,” Dauda said. “If the government becomes serious about cashew, it can generate significant revenue from it. We [in the cashew value chain] know how much we see”

On several occasions, the association’s authorities have lamented the government’s lack of interest, hindering the state from introducing policies, regulating or maintaining accurate records of cashew-related activities.

“Cashew is perennial; it takes a long time,” said the Special Assistant to the Kwara State Governor on Smallholder Farmers’ Intervention, Abdullahi Belle. He noted that the government is more focused on immediate ‘stomach infrastructure’ support for edible and annual crops.

In a phone conversation, Afees Abolore, the Commissioner for Agriculture in Kwara, said there are ongoing efforts to support women and youth in agriculture. Still, there are no gender-sensitive policies, laws, or programmes promoting women’s land ownership in the state.

While a few Nigerian organisations are helping some women to own land, their efforts remain a drop in the ocean.

Olatoye recommends that access to credit, fairness in support, and land reform policies be approached with gender sensitivity to make land ownership more accessible to women.

She believes supporting women farmers in large-scale cashew farming can boost agricultural productivity, rural wealth and grassroots job creation.

“Cashew is a valuable non-oil export that could be harnessed through women’s inclusion.”

By: Peace Oladipo

This story was supported by the Centre for Communication and Social Impact (CCSI)