Chavez Declares War on Hunger and Food Shortages
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez focused on the persistent shortages in the nation's supply of milk and meat products during his Sunday TV and radio show Aló Presidente yesterday.
by Chris Carlson
The president inaugurated a "socialist" milk processing plant, as well as an agro-industrial complex with the goal of increasing national production and solving food shortages in the country.
"We have to raise national production of meat and milk," said Chavez during the show. "We are going to transform Venezuela into a true superpower in food production."
The show was aired Sunday from a rural town near the Colombian border in the western state of Zulia where the Chavez government plans to install a "mega-project" for the production of milk and other products. The pilot program is meant as a solution to persistent food shortages that have affected the country since last year.
The president began the show by awarding land titles to local farmers, emphasizing the damage that concentrated land ownership does to national production, and insisting that the government carry forward with land reform policies.
He also announced a new program of low-cost credits to small producers as a way to increase investment in the agricultural sector.
"I have approved an extraordinary amount for the agricultural sector," said Chavez. "We are going to increase short-term credit, with low interest, and we are going to raise food production in Venezuela."
President Chavez also announced the creation of a cattle-producing complex in the region that will provide inputs to a "socialist" milk-processing plant inaugurated nearby.
The milk plant, which Chavez claims to be one of the largest in Latin America with a capacity of 1 million liters of milk per day, was bought by the Venezuelan government from the Italian multinational Parmalat for BsF. 800 million (US$ 372 million) after the company abandoned it.
Chavez said the plant is now operating, but producing only 60 thousand liters per day, which is 6 percent of its capacity. The Venezuelan government hopes the plant will be producing 400 thousand liters per day by next month, and 800 thousands liters per day by 2009.
The Venezuelan president explained the reasons for the shortages of milk and beef products that the country has experienced over the last year. Chavez referred to a chart showing how national milk production has remained relatively equal in recent years, whereas national consumption has exploded in the last two years. He insisted that it is the same situation with beef, forcing the country to import large amounts of milk and beef.
Chavez explained that world milk consumption had also grown by 20 percent in the last 10 years, in part due to China's increased consumption of milk, whereas milk production has only grown by 1 percent, causing world-wide shortages.
The Venezuelan government has made the claim that these shortages, as well as government price controls, have led to speculation on the part of large dairy producers who sell their production to producers of cheese and other goods in order to avoid the price controls.
In response, Chavez threatened to expropriate dairy farms that refuse to sell their production, or who sell it abroad. At the same time, he announced a 40 percent increase in the price of milk to help milk producers.
"I am aware that the price of milk is coming up short. That's why I am willing to elevate it a little to benefit all the primary producers," he said, but he issued a warning to large milk companies.
"I am going to warn the large milk-processing companies: Any producer that doesn't sell their milk to the nation will be treated as a traitor," he said.
But ultimately the government strategy is to increase national production through the construction of these "socialist" milk-processing plants, along with cattle-producing zones in the surrounding areas to supply them. The milk plants are placed under the management and control of the local communal councils in the surrounding communities, with support from the national government in the form of credit and technical assistance.
The strategy also includes a continuation of turning unproductive land over to small producers for the production of crops or livestock. The president of the National Land Institute announced yesterday that the government distributed some 50,000 hectares (123,000 acres) in the last year and that they would continue with this in 2008.
"This year the expropriation of land will be projected to the development and production of cattle-producing farms around these milk-processing plants," he said.
Chavez assured that the nation's supply of cattle had already increased from 10 million head to 12 million head, and that by next year this number would reach 16 million. He assured that Venezuela would become a cattle "superpower" in the near future.
"We want to strengthen national production so we are fully supplied by February of 2009," he said.
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/
international banksters must be seething!
I guarantee that the mainstream media will soon be coming up with reasons to bomb and invade Venezuela - they cannot, above all, allow the peasants to become self sufficient.
How else could they exploit their depedence on foreign banks or "USAID" to finance the purchase of food to meet their shortfalls???
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"Money" has no value - people do.
The food shortage was one reason why the poor did not come out to vote for the constitutional reforms. Anti-Chavez forces convinced the poor that the reforms would worsen shortages.
The problem is not just shortages, but erratic shortages. Grocery store shelves are usually empty, but sometime they have food, which leads to hoarding. This causes unpredictability, which makes the poor nervous and stressed-out. It made the poor worry that constitutional reforms would bring even more unpredictability.
Venezuela’s oil wealth destroyed the nation’s food production sector. People abandoned farms in order to go to cities, hoping to cash in on the oil economy. This caused a build-up of urban slums that don’t have enough food.
Today Venezuela must import most of its food, which the nation pays for with oil revenues. This makes Venezuela’ vulnerable to external control, despite its oil wealth. The government tries to control things through price caps, but this creates a black market in food. Black marketeers are independent of the government.
Food is Venezuela’s heel. If Venezuela does not attain some degree of self-sufficiency in food production, the Bolivarian Revolution will fail.
Chavez has brought medical care and literacy to many of the poor, but this will work against him if he does not also feed the poor. Educated but hungry people become radical.
It’s good to see that Chavez' government understands this. No state can survive if it does not balance self-sufficiency with international trade – no matter how much revenues that state takes in from one industry alone.
Wow Chavez has continued to impress me with his fuck-the-rich attitude and actually gets things done.
I really hope Chavez keeps up the good work and turns that country into a first world nation.
Then I can move there and escape these communist-nazi-jewish bankers.
Well it made me nervous and stressed-out.
Imagine i am visiting here, i go to the market to buy things but there is one big shortage in food and many other things for personal use!
And i knew its something to make you pissed about! imagine there is no Milk, Oil, Eggs, Bread and simply no flour, chickens and if you found wow things sold in black market in high prices and not only food!
Simply There is no control for prices! People sell as they like and nobody cares!
Chavez should do something about controlling prices and i think he is getting the message!
It's time to work and kick ass and not just talk! And i hope he is working!