In West Africa, farm income is highly exposed to risks from crop failure in the drier, inland areas, and from fluctuations in (world market) prices in the wetter coastal areas. As individuals and even extended families are poorly equipped to deal with these, provision of social safety nets is required. This paper reviews the situation in Ghana and the way in which the new financial instrument of index-based insurance might contribute to better it, focusing on the estimation of a crop indemnification scheme for farmers in Northern Ghana.