From Restoration Goal to Socioeconomic Prominence: Sustainability Lessons from Cashew Expansion in Northern Côte d’Ivoire Savannas

Lesson 1. International Market Prices Shape Local Practices

Across Africa, farmers are not price makers; they are price takers. The value of their crops depends on world prices transmitted through value chain actors. When international prices rise or fall, local rates follow, and farmers respond by adjusting inputs, expanding or reducing land, or shifting to other crops.

This highlights how rural producers are downstream actors of global economic decisions. Thus, the impacts of local campaigns and awareness efforts on green solutions will likely remain marginal as long as global markets reward yield over ecology.

Lesson 2. Farmers Are More Economists Than Ecologists

Farmers rapidly adopt systems that offer higher returns with less labour. Cotton once dominated northern Côte d’Ivoire, but between 2000 and 2008 its production fell from 400,000 to about 120,000 tonnes, and the number of producers dropped from 180,000 to 72,000. One key reason was that cashew’s net revenues became three times higher than those of cotton (Estur & Gergely, 2010).

Traditional agroforestry systems also declined. In Tengréla and Ouangolodougou near Korhogo, they shrank by 60.8% and 47.22%, largely converted into cashew monocultures between 1990 and 2020 (Timite et al., 2023). Likewise, land once used for food crops has declined, altering consumption habits. In Gontougo, once renowned for its yams, farmers now buy yams with cashew income after converting fields into cashew orchards (Mighty Earth et al., 2023).

This shift reveals farmers’ remarkable adaptability and economic rationality. It indicates that green solutions will remain sidelined unless they generate benefits within farmers’ short- and medium-term horizons.

Lesson 3. Sustainability Fades When the Research-Practice Connection Is Broken

Between 1999 and 2011, promising experiments at the National Center for Agronomic Research (CNRA/Korhogo) were abandoned due to political instability. These included research on live hedges, windbreaks, alley cropping, and the role of trees in crop performance and village economies were abandoned.  Although research activities have gradually resumed, they remain limited. This research hiatus left farmers with a narrow set of options, relying largely on extensive monocultures of cashew, cotton, and mango.

When local research slows, adaptive management stalls, extension services weaken, and policy decisions lose their evidence base, jeopardizing long-term sustainability.

Lesson 4. Policies Must Be Proactive, Not Just Reactive

Although cashew was initially promoted by the government as a restoration crop, policy frameworks did not guide its expansion. In the Séguéla region near Korhogo, cashew plantations increased by more than 7,000% in 17 years without a coordinated land-use plan (Bamba, 2019). Even around Comoé National Park (PNC), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, cashew areas increased by 160% between 2002 and 2014, while forest cover declined by 76% (Sangne et al., 2019). Furthermore, 80% of my key informants link this unregulated expansion to growing land conflicts in northern Côte d’Ivoire.

Policies now try to address problems that could have been anticipated. Sustainability in Africa demands research-driven policies that anticipate challenges rather than react to them.

Lesson 5. Caution with Exotic Species

Exotic species often have unintended effects; their introduction should therefore be preceded by thorough, long-term, and multi-scale assessments of their impacts. Recent studies show that cashew roots release chemical compounds that inhibit the growth of nearby plants (Okoronkwo et al., 2024). Farmers expressed this simply: “Under and around cashew, nothing grows.” Additionally, Falk et al. (2025) reported that cashew expansion affects the local water cycle, reducing groundwater recharge and altering evapotranspiration patterns. Similar concerns about exotic acacia species have been documented in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in many other contexts (Wuenschel, 2019). Native species should remain the default choice when designing green solutions.

Conclusion

The half-century expansion of cashew cannot be reduced to a binary assessment of “good” or “bad”. Instead, it provides a vivid case study in the complexities of sustainability. What began as a restoration effort has, through unchecked economic success, led to ecological simplification, intensified land-use conflicts, and the erosion of traditional agroforestry.

The lesson is clear. Ecological intentions are fragile without sustained support. Green solutions alone cannot endure; they must be reinforced through adaptive local research, economic incentives that align farmer livelihoods with long-term ecological health, and agile, forward-looking policies that can steer economic trends, rather than merely react to them. Sustainability, therefore, is not a static goal but a continuous negotiation between ecology, economics, and governance.