With financial support from the Presbyterian Disaster Asistance (PDA), the Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP) and the United Methodist Committee On Relief (UMCOR), RELUFA launched its Food Sovereignty Program in January 2006.
Eighteen villages in the District of Mokolo have been identified for the establishment of a Community Grain Banking system. Each of the groups made a storage room available to serve as their village granary and secured its door with three locks. They democratically chose a management team of six persons among whom they elected the treasurer. On an ongoing basis, RELUFA provides the needed sensitization and training activities through community workers of network member organizations ADERSA and ACD-Sahel. The operations are supervised by the coordinator of ADERSA.
Since the start of the 2006 harvest season, this team has gone out to buy bags of sorghum from small farmers in the villages and stock them in the granaries of the eighteen participating communities. At the time of food shortages these stocks will be sold against an agreed upon price or on credit to needy families within the respective groups. Surpluses will be sold outside the community at the market price. The money earned on the sale of this supply serves as working capital to buy up cereals from the community at the next harvest and to reconstitute the stock in their granary. At the same time, families that borrowed food from the cereal bank pay back in kind.
While at last year's harvest a 120 kg bag of yellow sorghum costed between 10,000-12,000FCFA, this year the price has gone up to 16,000 FCFA, i.e. an increase in the market price of about 40% in the market price. RELUFA has subsequently needed to adjust the number of bags provided to the communities from 100 to 60 per granary. The women's group of Tchembi has been the first to receive its stock. The operations have since continued to ensure the purchase for each of the granaries before speculators will have exhausted the supplies.
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