Grain bank gives poor some hope
ONE of the many causes of food shortages in China is lack of water to irrigate the land, but another is the fact that many farmers have to sell a lot of what they grow, and are left with nothing to eat.
Poor farmers usually have only one thing to sell - the grain which they grow on their land. When harvest comes around they have to exchange a large part of their crop for other urgent necessities.
However, grain is also the main part of their diet. Many farmers with small, or barren farms cannot produce enough crops to sell some and keep enough to feed their family all year round. After a few months they begin to run out of grain to eat.
They have to go out and buy their crops back. But by this time the price has gone up (sometimes by as much as 300 per cent). Everyone is trying to buy grain and demand is greater than supply.
So the farmers have to borrow to buy food for their families. Each year their debts get bigger and bigger and the amount of grain they can afford to buy back gets smaller, so the periods of food shortage they suffer grow longer and longer.
Oxfam Hong Kong and its local partners in China try to break this cycle by setting up 'grain banks'.
The system is simple.
A grain storage centre is built, and a sum of money is put into a fund.
Then at harvest time the fund is used to buy grain from the farmers at the market price.
The grain is put into storage and sold back to the farmers at the same price when they need it.
Bank costs little to set up, and is more or less self-funding once it has started.
Yet this This small amount of money can save many farmers from suffering long periods of hunger and from incurring big debts.
Ms Simpson is Communications Officer of Oxfam Hong Kong
