End of an Era

In mid January we unloaded our last container of Manna Pack. It is a nutritious, rice based meal with protein, vitamins and minerals added. The freight costs and shipping difficulties are killing us. With regard to supply chain issues, it now costs us nearly $10,000US to receive a 20 ton load of Manna Pack from the US interior to our Training Center in Phnom Penh. Domestic rice price are under the government thumb and our own raw rice is selling at our farm for only about $225 per ton. With a 62% milling percentage and a $50/ton milling cost, that brings our locally milled rice to $413 per ton. So, 20 tons of our own rice won't even pay the freight.  We realize that the nutritional value of the Manna Pack is superior, but our kids actually prefer the taste of their locally grown rice. With our own fish, eggs and livestock supplementing the rice along with our own garden vegetables, we can provide nutritious meals. It is not longer cost effective to ship the rice meals to Cambodia. We will be using our rice mill a lot this year. I know Children's Hunger Fund helps defer some of the freight cost, but we cannot continue to abuse their funding by asking them to use money that may be needed elsewhere to help us loose a few dollars per ton.

I hate to break our long relationship with Feed My Starving Children, Lou Binninger and Bill Meyer's most valuable and appreciated help. Everything could change suddenly and we will be begging again for food and to reestablish our very functional system may be difficult, but for the sake of our cash flow we must halt all shipments of low value items like rice from the USA. We still would greatly appreciate higher value products like the protein crumbles and vitamin mineral additives for Manna Pack, cooking oil, canned fish, raisins, etc. I owe all of you a great debt of gratitude for your selfless service! Thank you! I actually tremble as I write this and want you to all know how grateful I am for your long term support of FCOP.

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