Assessing the food security outcomes of industrial crop expansion in smallholder settings: insights from cotton production in Northern Ghana and sugarcane production in Central Ethiopia

The current industrial crop (IC) expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) may have important ramifications for food security. This study proposes a rapid appraisal method that can capture the food security outcomes of IC expansion in smallholder settings in SSA. A key element of this approach is a common unit of household caloric intake that captures food security across its four pillars (availability, access, utilization, stability). This approach also considers the role of women in household food security. The proposed approach is tested in two radically different smallholder IC settings: cotton production in Northern Ghana and sugarcane production in Central Ethiopia.