Cereal Banks: Receipt of Deposit as a Method for Improving Liquidity at the Local Level

Cereal Banks are a combination of warehouse and financial institution, where farmers can deposit their harvest and receive a receipt. By storing goods in the warehouse, the farmers can wait until prices increase before selling their harvest on the market. By receiving a receipt they can circulate as money, they are not forced to sell their crops when prices are at their lowest, generally following the harvest. Thus in this piece we refer to both a Warehouse and a Rural Credit Bank as being two arms of a « Cereal Bank ».

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