Saturday 9 May – Plan for Rice

Ferdinand and I have had a discussion going on for the last month or so. Since it is rainy season from around March to May/June, this is the time that many people are growing rice. This is also the time of year to be purchasing rice since it will be at its lowest cost. Last year, Rob purchased bags of rice for Tumaini in May/June to last for the year. Our present supply should last us until January, so we need to purchase rice now to make sure we can have rice until June of 2010.

There are several factors in buying rice. One of those factors is how has the rainy season been? If there's not been enough rain then obviously there will not be a lot of rice available, which causes the prices to go way up. Then another factor is that where you purchased rice last year may not have had good rains but someone across the lake had great rains for their growing season. If the person you used last year can't sell you rice at a good price then you have to spend time tracking down and talking to people and finding out how much they will sell for. I found I had an interesting (and Western) view of this rice purchase. I thought that the men would go and purchase all the rice needed at a big farm somewhere. Ferdinand explained to me that the men would have to go door to door and ask if they could purchase one or two bags of rice. Then they would pay each individual family for the rice purchased from them. There's not really an opportunity to operate on credit for this! Then they would have to pay a storage fee for the rice they gathered since it may take several days to go door to door and buy all the rice bags they need.

Here is the list of what we have to do to get rice this year:

Purchase new bags to store the rice we purchase

Purchase the Rice – 30 bags

Pay a storage fee for holding the bags of rice until we can reclaim them

Pay a Crop Tax

Pay Food & Lodging for the person finding and purchasing the rice

Hire a truck to bring the rice back

Pay a Loading/Unloading Fee

 

Comments

[Nancy]

Wow! Thanks for the education in procurement. We in the west certainly do have much for which to be thankful. We don't have to work nearly as hard to meet our basic needs.