<p></p><p>Vietnam sent young people to Tanzania to be trained in how to plant and process cashew nut in the 1970s. These young people then returned home and shared their new skills and knowledge with fellow citizens. To date, findings indicate that Vietnam is one of the leading countries globally for exporting cashew nut, yet Tanzania is now lagging behind. Cashew nut is among the major cash crops in Tanzania. However, market prices have shown downward trends discouraging smallholder farmers to increase production. Presenting a paper on the opportunities of cashew nut industry in the country during the Tanzania-Vietnam business forum, last week in Dar es salaam, the Director General of Cashew nut Board of Tanzania (CBT) Mfaume Juma said that the country used to produce over 20 percent of global production in the 1970s peaking at 145,000 metric tonnes in 1974.However, due to various factors, “Our shares in the world market declined and led us to low production,” he noted.Juma said that since the trend had been changing year after year, in 2012, the production regained and they had a climax production of 158 metric tonnes countrywide. In the year 2014/15, ‘we got a new record in the cashew nut production, when we produced around 200,000 metric tonnes countrywide,” he said.For higher cashew nut production in the near future, Juma further noted that one of their plans was to expand more areas of production from the traditional ones. Tanzania could also learn from Vietnam if it wants to produce high yields of cashew nut crop. In the 1970s both Tanzania and Vietnam sailed in the same boat. In the sense that their level of developments was the same; and at that time both were low income countries.Tanzania has the potential to increase production and processing capacities internally due to: availability of ample land for farm expansion, attractive farm gate prices given to the farmers through WRS, market opportunities provided by seasonality influences, and there are prospects for increased processing in the country as more small, medium, and large scale factories are being established in the localities.Juma mentioned some of the areas where Tanzania-Vietnam can collaborate, such as technology transfer, especially in local processing; utilisation of cashew nut by-products; large scale farming; and input supply in local markets such as quality jute/sisal bags, and motorised blowers. <br></p> <p>To read the full article on Tanzania and Vietnam's cashew industries, <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ippmedia.com/?l=89921">please click here</a>.<br></p><p></p>