April 13-15, 2011. Livingstone. Zambia. The meeting, which was jointly hosted by Alliance for Commodity Trade in Eastern and Southern Africa (ACTESA), Southern African Confederations Confederation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU) and East Africa Farmers Federation (EAFF), was attended by representatives of farmers' organisations and governments from the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) region as well as development agencies and implementing partners.
Some of the topics discussed in the meeting included key challenges in the marketing of agricultural commodities, agricultural standards and market access, farmers' participation in standards setting and models of linking small-scale farmers to regional markets.
Other topics were issues on small-holder farmer capacity, models of how smallholder farmers could directly supply commodities to World Food Programme (WFP) through Agricultural Commodity Exchange (ACE) and small-holder participation in biotechnology.
