Smallholder farmers in the region of Sub-Saharan Africa have begun to participate in global supply chains through applying contract farming (CF). The main aims of this paper are: to present a typology of CF and to describe the contract farming in Sub-Saharan African countries. This article has synthesised the fi ndings from contract farming agreements in Sub-Saharan African countries to form a conceptual framework of the determinants and dynamics of farmers’ participation in CF agreements. This article can be treated as an introduction to a complex comparative study of the Sub-Saharan African CF schemes and may spur further integrative analysis of the transformation in agriculture in developing countries.
Market liberalization and infl uence of the foreign competition were evident mainly in reductions of the areas with cereals, sugar beat and potatoes. In the case of sugar, there was mainly the infl uence of the reformation of sugar regimen by reducing the number of sugar beat processors. The year 2009 and also the year 2010 in terms of weather were very diffi cult for the farmers. Intensive rainfalls in Spring and very hot and dry weather in Summer affected all the plant production in negative way. The reasons for the price increase or decrease of commodities in the EU are as follows: cereals reserves, structural changes in the offer and demand, increase in demand on the Asian market, increase in biofuel production, protectionism business policy, currency development, low food production productivity in Africa and in other developing countries and climatic effects mainly in Europe (in the countries where cereals are mainly grown).