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Contract farming has become a popular way to integrate smallholder farmers into modern, high-value markets; however, poorly designed contracts may create additional risks for farmers and even subject them to abuses by larger agricultural players. In July, the FAO, along with UNIDROIT and IFAD, released a Legal Guide on Contract Farming , a comprehensive guide to establishing sound, transparent agricultural contracts between growers and buyers.

Since the 2007-2008 global food crisis, foreign land acquisitions, or “land grabs,” have exploded in number. In 2014, Land Matrix estimated that a total of 950 land deals were in effect in various stages throughout the world, often in countries with poor land governance and high levels of food insecurity. While foreign land acquisition does have the potential to increase essential investment into agriculture in poor developing countries, it also poses a risk to local populations, who may face a loss in access to and control over land.

In the 1960s, Ghana was the world’s largest producer of cocoa beans; while the country’s cocoa crop took a hit in the 1980s as a result of rampant bushfires, it has since rebounded and is now the second largest producer of cocoa beans in the world. The majority of the raw beans grown in Ghana are not processed within the country, however, and the government has been putting more emphasis in recent years on promoting industrialization of the domestic cocoa value chain by subsidizing the price paid for beans by local cocoa bean processors.

On September 16, the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) will highlight the Africa south of the Sahara Food Security Portal at a panel event held in collaboration with IFPRI, the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) Secretariat, the European Commission, and the Pan African Farmers Association (PAFO).

With its history of political unrest and armed conflict combined with periodic droughts, widespread poverty, and low levels of food production per capita, South Sudan faces a particularly daunting food security situation. At present, Africa’s newest country relies on private sector cereal imports from Uganda for 30-50 percent of its total cereal supply.