617,684 tons of raw cashew produced in 2025/26. The target was 700,000. Most cashew belts are within striking distance of full delivery. Behind the numbers: 100 shelling machines for 2,800 youth, the TARI Naliendele pathology laboratory at 67% completion, and a serious pesticide procurement programme.
Cashew is one of Tanzania’s most reliable cash crops. It grows well in the southeast, in the cashew belt of Mtwara, Lindi, Pwani and Ruvuma. It has a relatively predictable production cycle. And in 2025/26, Tanzania produced 617,684 tons against a target of 700,000 — 88% of plan. Of all the major commodity crops, cashew comes closest to delivering on its targeted volume in the FY 2025/26 cycle.
The production picture
617,683.77 tons of raw cashew were produced in the 2025/26 season — the highest single-year cashew production figure Tanzania has recorded in recent decades. The 88% target achievement is meaningful both because the absolute number is high and because the trajectory of the past five years has been consistently upward. Cashew has benefited from sustained policy attention, an effective Cashew Board, and a value chain whose shape is well understood by farmers, traders and processors.
Most of the volume continues to come from the traditional cashew belt — Mtwara accounts for the largest share, followed by Lindi, Pwani and Ruvuma. New plantings on the central plateau, particularly in parts of Iringa and Tabora, are starting to contribute, although these new-zone trees are mostly still pre-bearing or in early bearing years. The geographic diversification of cashew production is a long-game investment that will show up in the data over the next five to ten years.
511 young extension officers in the cashew belt
Under the BBT-Ugani window, the Cashew Board hired 511 young agricultural graduates as extension officers in FY 2025/26. The deployment is concentrated in the cashew belt regions, where they work directly with smallholder cashew farmers on agronomy, pest management, post-harvest practices and the Warehouse Receipt System auctions through which most Tanzanian cashew is marketed.
511 extension officers in a belt that produces 617,684 tons works out to roughly one officer per 1,200 tons of production — a meaningful improvement on the historical extension-to-farmer ratio. The expectation is that consistent agronomic guidance will lift yields in the older orchards (which often suffer from gradual productivity decline as trees age) and accelerate the bearing trajectory of newer plantings.
100 shelling machines for 2,800 youth and women
The most direct value-addition intervention in cashew, as covered in Feature 4.4, is the distribution of 100 cashew shelling machines to 2,800 youth and women in the cashew belt. Each machine supports a small business or cooperative engaged in shelling raw cashew before sale, capturing the value differential between unshelled and shelled cashew that has historically been earned outside Tanzania.
100 machines is not enough to materially shift Tanzania’s overall raw-vs-shelled export ratio yet. But it is a working model that can be replicated. If the FY 2025/26 cohort of 2,800 youth and women operate their machines successfully and demonstrate sustainable income generation, the case for expanding the programme by an order of magnitude becomes much easier to make in subsequent budget cycles.
The TARI Naliendele pathology laboratory
Cashew faces specific disease pressures that require dedicated research capacity to address. The TARI Naliendele Cashew Research Centre is constructing a pathology laboratory now at 67% completion. The lab’s focus is on the diseases that have most affected Tanzanian cashew yields in recent years: cashew leaf and nut blight, fusarium wilt, and powdery mildew. Each of these has cost the cashew belt meaningful tonnage in the past, and a fully-equipped pathology laboratory at Naliendele will accelerate the development of disease-resistant variety options and integrated disease management protocols.
Beyond the laboratory itself, the FY 2025/26 cycle has included pesticide procurement at meaningful scale — 3,000 litres of fungicide and 1,000 litres of copper sulphate — for distribution into the cashew belt. The pesticide programme addresses the most immediate yield-loss risks while the longer-term variety-and-resistance research at Naliendele matures.
The Warehouse Receipt System and price discovery
Tanzania markets most of its cashew through the Warehouse Receipt System, WRS, which involves farmers depositing their produce in licensed warehouses and selling through structured auctions. The WRS provides better price discovery than traditional middleman-dominated markets and gives farmers access to credit against their warehoused stocks during the marketing season.
The WRS for cashew has been one of the more successful applications of the receipt-system model in Tanzania, although it is not without operational challenges. The Cashew Board continues to refine WRS operations to address concerns around price levels, payment timeliness, and the alignment of warehouse capacity with regional production. These operational improvements are less visible than infrastructure investments but materially affect the price farmers actually receive.
“Mafanikio katika zao la korosho yanaendelea kuonekana, na lengo letu ni kuvuka tani 700,000 katika kipindi cha mwaka huu wa fedha kwa kuendeleza juhudi za kuongeza tija na uongezaji thamani.”
— Hon. Daniel Godfrey Chongolo (MB), Waziri wa Kilimo, Hotuba ya Bajeti FY 2026/2027 (editorial composite reflecting cashew framing)
Where the next 12% comes from
The gap from 88% to 100% of target — roughly 82,000 tons — has multiple plausible sources. Higher-yielding management of existing orchards through the new extension officers is one. Disease control through the TARI Naliendele research and pesticide procurement is another. The first commercial bearing of newer plantings on the central plateau is a third. Some combination of all three is likely to be needed to close the gap fully during FY 2026/27.
The cashew sector is in a strong position to deliver. The institutional architecture is well-developed, the production trajectory is favourable, the value-addition programme is operational, and the research capacity is being upgraded. If any commodity crop in Tanzania is positioned to deliver against its FY 2026/27 target in full, cashew is the most plausible candidate.