Alexis Chapman's photo of white coca seeds in Ghana that will eventually become chocolate is the first in a series of shots on farming in Africa sent in by BBC News website readers.

Skyler Russell says it is not uncommon to see young boys out on the vast Tanzanian plains herding their father's sheep and goats: "I love the dust that envelopes this young boy."

Cheese-maker Kate Arding went to Karamoja, cattle country in north-eastern Uganda, to teach people how to make cheese. In this picture someone is seen testing the curd.

In this picture sent in by Fred and Aileen Knip, a young Sudanese woman displaced by the conflict in war-torn Darfur prepares the ground for seeds.

Jamaal Montasser took this shot of a man ploughing a field with cattle while on a work placement with Ghana's ministry of agriculture.

Zambian farmer Wilhelm Hesse sent in this picture of ex-colleagues who were preparing land that was previously bush for cultivation by a technique known as "disking"...

... here Mr Hesse is snapped in a wheat field on a large estate which has since been divided up and sold - which he fears will affect productivity in the area.

This aerial photograph of fields in northern Kenya was taken by Angela Sacha whilst flying between Nanyuki and the Matthews Mountains.

A Malawian woman in Kandie village returning from a day of cultivation with a bunch of bananas on her head is captured in Rick Wadley's picture.

Joe Mulligan photographed a subsistence farmer and his family in their store of maize harvested between November and December in the isolated Dadiya Hills of north-eastern Nigeria.

A woman sifts grain in Justin Hackett's photograph taken in Tach Gayint in Ethiopia's Amhara region. For a future gallery please send in pictures from Africa of the colour purple.