Jeff Sachs once told us younglings that the Financial Times was "the real newspaper... the newspaper you all need to be reading if you want to become economists..." IMHO, he was correct.
Here we have Emiko Terazono writing about supply, demand, market equilibrium--and the consequences of a shift in preferences that strengthens demand: the dance between nut-snackers in the North Atlantic's, China's, and India's middle classes, cashew traders and brokers, and the cashew farmers of Africa:
Emiko Terazono: Courted for cashews, west African farmers gain strength: "Under the darkness of midnight in Seketia, a farming village in western Ghana, cashew traders and middlemen go knocking from door to door looking for supplies of harvested nuts.
“During the peak harvest, they visit us late at night, trying to get us to sell,” says David Enkamah, a cashew farmer.
Worldwide demand for cashew has grown about 7 per cent a year over the past decade on the back of healthy snacking habits. The treenut, along with sesame seeds (favoured by the Japanese, South Koreans and Chinese) and pigeon peas, a common ingredient in Indian kitchens, are among a number of crops where the balance of power has tilted a little towards African farmers. Growers of cashew, buoyed by demand from India and China as well as resurgent consumption in Europe and North America, are among those defying the stereotype of smallholder farmers in developing countries rendered powerless against the might of multinational companies and market forces.