Cereal Bank Management Training Critical to Success
For a week in February, field staff from local partner RELUFA conducted a field visit to the Far North region to hold a workshop and assess program activities. Community cereal banks have certainly improved food security for participating villages, but since they don’t run themselves, staff helped villagers set up monitoring committees and a complaints mechanism. The annual assessment gave 56 representatives from 31 villages a chance to share how they deal with challenges.
The discussions yielded some good results, such as the need to raise usage fees so the community has sufficient funds for needed repairs. Since occasionally a farmer who borrows millet from the seed bank doesn’t pay back the loan, the groups which demand an extra bag from the recalcitrant borrower found greater compliance than those who banned the farmer from borrowing again. The consensus was that the management committee needs to understand the behavior of the borrower, so each one should come with a guarantor who would be required to reimburse the grain bank should the borrower default. Complaints could also be taken to the traditional village leaders to sort out.
The grain banks are generally large enough to hold 600 bags of cereal or shelled peanuts, a crop that women manage. A well-managed grain bank protects stored bags from theft, insect damage, and spoiled from damp.
This year’s meeting also included a workshop on composting and best practices for selecting and conserving peanut seeds for planting. Twelve villages where farms were situated far from the grain banks received lightweight “wheel trucks” or easily-managed pushcarts to help farmers transport their bags of grain from their fields to the warehouses. The wheel trucks, shared among the farmers, also made it easier to move compost out to their fields, especially for women. As an incentive to better warehouse management, the top performers received sturdy boots, highly prized over going barefoot in fields where they might be subject to snakebites and thorn punctures.
Cameroon Far North Program
Led by Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Local Partner Résaue de Lutte contra la Faim (RELUFA)