FARMER FOOD BANKS

In order to improve the income of small African farmers, IPHD initiated a Food Banks Program in the Republic of Guinea, Central African Republic, and the Republic of Congo. 

Farmers in an area of several villages are organized into groups or cooperatives to market their crops to an IPHD-sponsored food bank.  The management of the food bank, initially operated by Caritas and later by the farmers, sells the produce between harvests when the price is highest.  Farmers earn 20-50 percent more through food banks than if they sell their harvest to middle-men.  Most farmers in a Food Bank program also receive training, loans, seeds and tools for improving their cultivation.

During the so-called “hungry time” of the year, food banks also sell back to farm families produce at cost. 

In Guinea, IPHD has developed nine food banks, and some 15,000 farmers are members of these banks.  Other neighboring areas have asked IPHD to set up additional food banks.  In the Congo Republic, there are three demonstration food banks.  In the Central African Republic, there is a food bank in Mbaiki for over 500 farmers, and two others will be developed in 2006-07.  IPHD has plans, if funds are available, to expand this concept to Guinea-Bissau, Niger, and Sierra Leone.

Food banks provide farmers with more cash to buy other foods, medicines, clothing tools, housing materials, and other needs.  Farmers become part of a more dynamic and regional economy for the first time.  And for the first time they begin to manage their own resources from cultivation through marketing.