STEEM PLANT CONTEST : MY BEAUTIFUL CASHEW (ANACARDIUM OCCIDENTALE ) PLANTS // 01-04-21

Cashew plant is botanically called Anacardium occidental, and basically in my locality in Ghana where we farm it the most we call is Atiaa.
This crop plant is known to be originated from Brazil but was brought to Africa in 16th century by some Portuguese missionary, today in Africa especially the southern part of Ghana Cashew has been a main source of income.

Cashew farming is very tedious and take about 4 years to start producing fruit and seeds , personally I am working on my young cashew plantation for 3 years now and I have started making some money by selling the small seeds I am getting .

Steps involved in having a perfect cashew plantation:

• Nursing of viable seeds

• An acre of land must contain about 40-45 trees

• Mostly in my village we usually plant the cashew seed immediately after we begin to harvest yam, by using the same land. , so the raising of mouse to cultivate yam will soften the land for easy growth of the cashew plant

• Carefully and frequently visit the farm ,to chase away animals that dig to remove the planted seed and eat , you can use a camouflage to scare them away

• We time the raining season before we plant after the first rain fall it will start germinating

• It will take 4 years for you to begin having seeds

The cashew plant produce a fruit and seed, the seed is an external one and mostly in Africa the seed is the most important things because all companies that comes to export cashew are interested in the seed, so farmers trade this for cash, the seed contain a cotyledon which is generally call the kernel, oil and a dark coat that can be use a Biomass fuel.

The cashew fruit are either ate by us or some use it to produce a jam which is extracting the juice in the fruits , this fruit seems to be acidic but not that dangerous , mostly we throw away the fruit because we do not have the capacity to store it fresh it begin to spoil after 24hours .

I grew up in a home where our education is being sponsored by the Cashew plantation our parents had , I am now in the university and cashew still pay for my fees, rent and food .
Eating cashew fruits has been a whole benefit to my health, cashew is rich in fibre and has a very low sugar, it help refresh your brain, it strengthen your bones due to the presence of magnesium in it and boost our immunity.
Cashew plant serve as a source of shade for fresh air , sometimes we do plant them at home just for sitting under purpose .

Base on my personal experience , the main disadvantage to cashew plantation is the price fluctuation of how it seed are sold , sometimes the price goes low to the extent that farmers can’t even recover the amount they invested in my buying chemicals to spray their farms.