while buffer stocks have an explicit market price objective social safety nets focus on the provision of cereals or food at subsidised prices emergency stocks will not be considered as they are only released to provide emergency relief and are not intended to influence domestic market prices first of all most stockholding programmes have multiple purposes and often one agency is tasked with completing several objectives second the goals for holding public stocks can change over time that is a stock that was acquired with the purpose of stabilising domestic prices can be used for food distribution programmes