If your cashew costs have shifted since last year, it isn't one thing driving it. There are four separate pressures moving at roughly the same time — two pushing prices up, one pulling them back down, and one that has nothing to do with cashews at all but shows up on your invoice anyway.

Benin's export restrictions haven't fully lifted

Benin's April 2025 decision to restrict raw cashew nut exports — intended to push more processing to happen inside the country rather than shipping raw material out — pushed CNF pricing up roughly 10–20% at the time. That restriction hasn't been reversed, and 2026 forecasts still sit around $1,700–1,900 per ton CNF overall, elevated compared to pre-restriction levels for exactly that reason.

A difficult 2025 harvest in East Africa

Separately, a rainfall deficit affected the 2025 Zanzibar/Tanzania growing season, tightening yield and collection out of another major origin market at roughly the same time as the Benin restriction. Two supply-side problems in different countries landing in the same window compounded each other rather than offsetting.

A US import tariff added another cost layer

A US import tariff on cashew imports introduced in 2025 added further cost for buyers in that market. Since US demand makes up a meaningful share of global cashew trade, that cost pressure feeds back into global CNF pricing dynamics rather than staying contained to one country's import bill.

Indian demand has actually cooled, not spiked

Here's the part that doesn't fit the simple "prices are rising" story: domestic Indian demand has softened through the first half of 2026. Sweet shops, traders, and retailers have largely been buying hand-to-mouth rather than stocking ahead, which has kept CNF rates sideways to slightly soft recently — even though none of the supply-side restrictions above have actually lifted. Pricing right now is less a straight line up and more a tug-of-war between tight supply and soft demand.

This season's crop quality is adding cost on our end

From what we're seeing on our own processing floor this season, getting kernels to the same finish and moisture spec has taken more careful handling than usual — a cost that doesn't always show up as a clean, citable industry statistic, but is a real and current factor in what it takes to deliver a consistent batch right now.

The rupee is quietly doing the rest

Raw cashew nut is imported and priced in US dollars, so the rupee's own movement matters independent of the global USD price. As of mid-September 2026, USD/INR sits around 96 — the rupee has weakened roughly 9.25% over the trailing 12 months, from a 2025 base near ₹84–88/USD to a 2026 low near ₹99.82 in March before partially recovering. That alone raises landed cost in India even if the dollar price of cashews doesn't move at all — a driver that's easy to miss if you're only watching the commodity price.

What this means for ordering

For anyone placing a large order, splitting it into tranches — released in stages, each priced at that week's rate — spreads exposure to any one of these moving parts rather than locking a full volume against a single week's number. And with Diwali (Nov 8) approaching, anyone still sourcing for festival season is better off finalizing orders now than waiting for this picture to simplify — on current trends, it isn't likely to before then.