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This post contains excerpts from the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) blog .

The first Global Forum for Innovations in Agriculture (GFIA) , Africa Edition, was held on December 1-2 in Durban, South Africa.  The meeting brought together policymakers, private sector actors, farmers’ organizations, and international organizations to discuss innovations, investments, and policies for advancing Africa’s development through improvements in data collection to provide relevant and timely information for agricultural producers.

Macroeconomic policies (monetary and fiscal policies, exchange rate policies, and trade policies) can significantly impact agricultural development and food security, and vice versa. This complex relationship is the subject of a new book , Macroeconomics, Agriculture, and Food Security: A Guide to Policy Analysis in Developing Countries , written by IFPRI Visiting Senior Research Fellow Eugenio Diaz-Bonilla.

Macroeconomic policies (monetary and fiscal policies, exchange rate policies, and trade policies) can significantly impact agricultural development and food security, and vice versa. This complex relationship is the subject of a new book , Macroeconomics, Agriculture, and Food Security: A Guide to Policy Analysis in Developing Countries , written by IFPRI Visiting Senior Research Fellow Eugenio Diaz-Bonilla.

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.