Community cereal banks enhance food security

A cereal bank is a community-based institution involving a village that stocks and manages the process of acquiring, pricing and supplying the grain.
The main reason for their formation is to improve food supply in hungry season especially during dry spells.
Cereal is bought from the village or from other markets at a cheaper price especially during harvest season and later sold to the villagers at a reasonable price when their granaries run dry.

The farmers are paid a better price for their grain, when the market prices are low and get money to pay for school fees and other basic necessities at that time.
Then when there is scarcity, the market price shoots up and the villagers turn to cereal banks as a source of grain. They purchase their grain from the cereal banks at a price they can afford, so they don’t have to move long distances to look for grain.
The banks in turn make a profit while also taking care of those in the community who would have bought the grain at a much higher price somewhere else.

A cereal bank determines how much cereal will take the village through the hungry season; the price at which it buys the cereal can be lower than the market price and when it buys from trader the price is not more than the market price.
Whenever there is scarcity, everyone buy from the bank and since more people may be having money to buy the grain, a cereal bank regulates the buying and selling such that those who don’t have much money can also buy the grain.

Cereal banks allow each member to buy a certain amount of grain thus determining how much each family can buy. This prevents individuals who might want to resell and make profits.
Through this cereal bank, I have been able to educate my children and even make some savings’ said Napio a member of a women’s cereal bank in northern Uganda.

Cereal banks can also allow people to buy on credit on condition that it works out a way of how to deal with people, who do not pay their debts.
In general cereal banks enhance food security and economic independence to rural communities especially the very poor.