Packed in souvenir boxes and distilled into Feni, the cashew, or kazu, is so deeply embedded in Goan life that it feels like it grew straight out of the region’s origin story.
But it didn’t.
“Before the arrival of the Portuguese in Goa, there was no kazu,” says historian Prajal Sakhardande. He points out that many staples, considered local, like potatoes, papayas, pineapples, and tomatoes, actually arrived on ships. But their most enduring import was the cashew.
The story dates back to the year 1500, when a Portuguese fleet led by Pedro Álvares Cabral landed in Brazil. There, among the indigenous Tupi tribes, they discovered a unique fruit the locals called Kazu.
“The beauty of this is the linguistic heritage, which we still call Kazu,” he explains. Historians debate the exact year the cashew arrived on the West Coast of India. Regardless of the exact date, Sakhardande says Jesuit missionaries brought the saplings in the 16th century for a highly practical reason: to stop soil erosion.
From soil protection to naval power
The missionaries planted the trees, but they did not know what else the plants could do. “They were not aware of the utility value of the cashew,” says environmentalist Rajendra Kerkar.
Relying on a culture of observation, Goan fishermen discovered a hidden utility inside the tough outer shell of the nut. “They realised that the nut of the cashew gives them liquid paint,” he explains. “You know, the Goan people, they were always using trial and error methods.”
This extract was exactly what the local fishermen needed. It was highly water-repellent and anti-corrosive.
When the Portuguese, a massive naval power at the time, saw this local ingenuity, they scaled it up. “Along with their engineers, they made use of this paint to apply to their boats,” Kerkar notes. The plant brought in to protect the soil was now sealing the empire’s fleet in shipbuilding hubs like Chorao and Divar.
The mathematics of the harvest
To understand what the cashew means to Goan families, you have to stand in the orchards. Pandurang Gaonkar grew up watching his father manage their property.
The harvest cycle begins with flowering at the end of the monsoons, around September and October. By the end of January or early February, the fruit matures. Gaonkar remembers his father resting in the plantation right after lunch during peak season. “Because if he had slept at home and forgotten, he would miss out on that day’s yield and collection,” he recalls.
Labourers and neighbours worked side by side on daily wages. “We would carry either a basket or a bucket in the evening, along with a thorny stick of a wild berry shrub,” Gaonkar says.
Everything was brought to the ‘Kollmi’, a central gathering spot where they sat together to manually separate the nut from the fruit. The nuts went to the fire; the fruit went to the press. “Those days, we used to do distillation even thrice a day. That used to be the quantity of cashew juice,” Gaonkar says. “At times, there was even excess.” Today, the reality is starkly different. Gaonkar claims that his yields have dropped from 20 quintals to just four, an 80% decrease.
A fractured industry
As decades passed, the local harvest turned into a commercial enterprise. Rohit Zantye’s family has been in the cashew business for generations. “Business was started by my great-grandfather more than 100 years ago,” Zantye says. “He did the first export in the year 1928. It was only in 1965 that we started retailing.”
But as the market exploded, the local processing landscape collapsed. Two decades ago, Goa had over 40 cashew processing facilities. Today, Zantye notes, barely one or two survive. “The new generation didn’t want to get into this business, while some were unable to market their product,” he explains.
This vacuum was filled by traders. “Now if you go around Goa, most of them who are selling cashews to locals, as well as the tourists, are non-Goans,” he points out.
“The mindset is profiteering,” he says. “They are not worried about brand image or providing the best quality product.” To cut costs, some started importing cheaper African cashews and passing them off as Goan. Traders also manipulated weights or resorted to blatant deception. “They used to pack rejected material inside, which was covered by good-quality cashews,” Zantye reveals.
“People bought their products on a trial basis, and they were cheated,” he says. “Initially, we got this, ‘Oh, this person is selling much cheaper. How is it possible?’ But through their experiences, they realised that you have to trust a brand.”
The journey of the cashew remains full of contradictions. It grew from a Brazilian seed into a naval tool, and finally into a heavily contested global commodity. Yet, strip away the branded packaging and the crowded tourist markets, and the core of the story remains unchanged. It is still just a tree growing in Goa’s soil, worked by the hands of people who know exactly what it is worth.
