Cashew and coffee farming

About the business

Planting cashew and coffee on hill slopes. The government is pushing both: the Department of Agricultural Extension's cashew and coffee project began in June 2021 and now runs in 66 upazilas across 19 districts, handing out saplings and training free. Cashew area has gone from 2,200 hectares to about 4,500 and coffee from 65 hectares to roughly 2,000. But one thing has to be understood before anything else, or the household will not eat: these trees take years to pay. Cashew gives its first flower and fruit four to five years after the sapling goes in, coffee three to four. Mongsui Marma of Ruma planted 50 trees three years ago and got a little over ten kilos this year. Mangpong Mro of Mrolong Para put 600 coffee saplings into half his mango orchard three years ago; the first year made him Tk 2,500 and he now earns about Tk 40,000 a year. Through those years the land is occupied and earns nothing. The prices are good: a farmer gets Tk 180-200 a kg for raw cashew nut and Tk 350-400 for raw coffee, against Tk 40 a kg for a hill mango. Five kilos of raw nut make one kilo of processed cashew, and that kilo sells in Dhaka at Tk 1,600-1,750, so most of the value stays in the processing shed rather than the farmer's house. Weather is the sharpest risk: unseasonal rain or drought at flowering takes the whole year's crop.

Unit economics

What you need to start

• A paved drying floor or tarpaulin, sacks and a dry store. Cashew keeps for months indoors, which is one real advantage of this crop.Equipment
• Saplings, free from the Cashew and Coffee Research, Development and Extension Project, which runs in 66 upazilas across 19 districts. For coffee the released varieties are BARI Coffee-1 (robusta) and BARI Coffee-2 (arabica).Starting stock
• Trade licence from the union parishad, municipality or city corporation, needed to sell or supply commercially: form Tk 10, licence book Tk 50, standard tax Tk 30, stamp Tk 150-300, licence fee Tk 100-60,000 by trade type.Licence
• Bangladesh Food Safety Authority registration is not needed to sell raw nut or coffee, but processing and packing makes you a packaged food producer and registration applies: Tk 1,000 new, Tk 500 renewal, valid three years.Licence
• Planting and nursing through the first few years, fertiliser use, and harvesting and drying at the right time. The project gives training free; without it the nuts come small and buyers walk away.Skill
• A buyer for the raw crop: a local processor or a roastery. Twenty-two nut processing plants have been built of which fifteen run regularly; for coffee, North End Coffee Roasters, Abul Khair Group and PRAN-RFL buy directly.Supplier
• Hill slope land that does not waterlog. The Department of Agricultural Extension reckons about 98 percent of hill land is still uncultivated and most of it could carry these two crops.Workspace

How the work is done

1. 1Look at the land first. A hill slope that does not hold water is needed, and arabica coffee does best at 18-22 degrees Celsius; the tree suffers in more heat.
2. 2Go to the upazila agriculture office and ask for saplings and training under the cashew and coffee project. It gives both free: in Bandarban alone about 2,000 farmers were given coffee saplings between 2021 and 2026.
3. 3Choose the variety. BARI Coffee-1 (robusta) was released in 2023 and BARI Coffee-2 (arabica) in 2025, both from the Hill Agricultural Research Centre at Khagrachhari.
4. 4Settle how you will eat for four or five years before anything else. Do not plant the whole plot at once: the farmers of Mrolong Para put coffee into half the mango orchard and kept living off the other half.
5. 5Plant, and manage watering and weeds for the first two or three years. Cashew needs little care, but without fertiliser the nuts come small and the processing plants then refuse to buy them.
6. 6Watch the flowering window. Cashew flowers from November to January and the nuts are collected from May to July; unseasonal rain or drought in that window takes the whole year's crop.
7. 7Sort out drying. Drying in an open field costs quality, and without quick processing in the remote hills coffee loses grade too. The agriculture department talks of union-level drying and processing centres; find out whether yours has one.
8. 8Do not shell cashew bare-handed: the shell carries urushiol, which blisters and itches the skin.
9. 9Line up the buyer before harvest. Middlemen take raw nut cheap and ship it to Dhaka and Chattogram; talking directly to a processing plant or a roastery gets a better price.
10. 10If you think of processing yourself, do the arithmetic first. Five kilos of raw nut give one kilo of cashew, which sells in Dhaka at Tk 1,600-1,750. But a plant in Bandarban has already closed for want of capital, and bank credit is not available in this sector.

Sources

• সিটি কর্পোরেশন থেকে ট্রেড লাইসেন্স প্রাপ্তির ধাপ সমূহ

  Collected: 16 Sept 2026

  Supports: Starting capital · বাংলাদেশ

• All food businesses now need safety registration

  Collected: 22 Jul 2026

  Supports: Starting capital · বাংলাদেশ

What changed

No corrections have been published yet.

Questions and answers

No questions yet. Be the first to ask.