Cashew is a promising plantation crop in the state of Meghalaya. The cashew growers in the study area showed keen interest in taking up the cashew cultivation on a larger area in a larger scale. The agro-climatic conditions of Garo Hills in Meghalaya are highly favourable for development of various plantation crops and cashew is one of the plantation crops which are being taken up by the farmers as a promising crop. The research study was, therefore, considered looking at the present scenario and the objectives selected were 1) To study the costs and returns in cashew cultivation and 2) To study the constraints in production of cashew. The west Garo Hills district has the highest production and area under cashew cultivation in the state of Meghalaya. Hence, West Hills district was selected for the study area. The three villages were selected purposively for the study under a block as those villages have the highest production. The cashew growers were classified into three categories based upon their operational land holding viz., marginal growers, small growers and large growers. The number of cashew growers of the three villages was found to be one hundred and seventy three (173) in total. In the process, out of the total cashew growers, a sample of 60 cashew growers comprising of all the categories were selected by following probability proportional to size (PPS) sampling method. The overall total cost of establishing a cashew orchard was estimated to be Rupees 28542.00 per hectare and the establishment cost was highest for a large category of orchard amounting to Rupees 28728.00 in comparison to small (Rupees 28016.00) and marginal ( Rupees26686.00) category of cashew orchard. The gross return obtained from the harvest in the fourth year was estimated to be Rupees 117600.00 for marginal category and for small and large growers, it was estimated to be Rupees 107800.00 and Rupees110950.00, respectively. The net returns for the marginal, small and large growers were found to be Rupees 54136.00, Rupees 40615.40 and Rupees 41749.15, respectively. The problems and constraints faced by the cashew growers were die back disease, root and stem borer, red ants, absence of nearby market for the easy disposal of the produce, price fluctuation, absence of training facilities and non-availability of good planting materials. The problems were faced by all the category of growers to a varying degree.
Key words: Economics, Constraints, Cashew nut, Meghalaya.