In Venezuela, Land Redistribution Program Backfires

[cali]

In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez's government has made the expropriation of farmland — taking land from big landholders and giving it to the poor — central to his so-called revolution. The idea is to spur production and end dependence on food imports.

But the results have fallen short, making the country more dependent on foreign food than ever before.

Consider farmer Ramon Barrera, who spends his days feeding a handful of scrawny pigs.

He thought he also would be raising crops after arriving a few months ago in Las Vegas, a town in a sun-baked corner of northwestern Venezuela.

The land had been a vast cattle ranch before the government seized it to redistribute to poor farmers like Barrera.

But Barrera says there is no irrigation, no technical help from the government and no credit.

<snip>

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106620230
<snip>

[rusty charly]

1. When it comes to Venuzuela...

I basically don't trust ANY American reporting, NPR included.

[The Straight Story]

2. And some don't trust the reporting from there either

:)

[MercutioATC]

3. There's a REASON that small farms have all but died off in this country.

Big farms can perform the same function more efficiently and economically.

It may be an unpleasant truth, but it's still the truth.

[Hippo_Tron]

13. Chavez would have done better to threaten nationalization than to actually do it

Several leaders in the Middle East faced similar dilemmas in the wake of their revolutions. They nationalized their oil and threw the western oil companies out but then didn't have the infrastructure to actually drill and refine the oil. The better solution would've been to negotiate with the oil companies to get terms more favorable to the national interests with the threat of nationalization employed as a weapon to make the oil companies concede.

[rusty charly]

27. Jamaica did the same things with the hotels.

Nationalized them and forgot about the teensy, weensy issue of marketing and travel agencies and sold all the hotels back, now to different chains. So, down there you hear: This USED to be a Radisson, but now it's a Hilton, etc., etc.

[XemaSab]

18. You can put one dude with a hoe on an acre for 12 hours a day

or you can put one dude with a tractor on 100 acres for 12 hours a day.

Which guy is going to feed more people?

Which guy is going to have the wealth to feed and educate his kids?

[nosmokes]

21. Not if you take into account the true cost of industrial ag.

[JVS]

22. Which is why collective farming is the proper socialist method to replace land barons.

[Hippo_Tron]

31. You can have all of the collectives you want, if you don't have the technology it won't be efficient

[JVS]

33. The entire point of a collective is that they have the land and money between all of them to...

get the technology.

[Taverner]

4. I almost think we should almost always identify original sources when talking Venezuela or Chavez

There are some serious Anti-Chavez disinformation machines out there

There are some serious Pro-Chavez disinformation machines out there

Chavez started out right, but lately has done some very anti-democratic things - which call into question any of its organs.

Then again, the US has done some very anti-democratic things - and IT'S organs need to be called into question.

[zeemike]

5. This hit piece is not new...I saw it at least a month ago.

The man has been on the farm for two months and the problems are not solved...just like Obama has been in office 6 months and the problems are not solved.
But before it was a large cattle ranch owned by a rich person that probably sold the cattle to McDonald's for cash....that produces 0 food for the people of that country....so how is that better?
Colonialism has done that all over the world...exploited the resources of the land for the benefit of the wealthy. And there excuse is that they can make the land productive...for themselves and the natives can just go fuck themselves.

[EFerrari]

6. Yep, we already did this, complete with links to new contracts

for tech development and provision that this individual say isn't available. I'll pass this time.

[Cerridwen]

10. See my post #8. I found one of the threads. n/t

eta: oops, I was post #8.

[EFerrari]

14. Thanks. We can't have enough concern here about Venezuela, I guess.

[zeemike]

30. I new I remembered that post....thanks n/t

[cali]

7. it's dated July 15th.

the bottom line is that Venezuela is importing much more of its food than it did a few years ago. I actually approve of the idea of the plan- in theory, but the reality is that implementing such a plan is fraught with difficulties. And btw, this is a program that has been ongoing for years- not a mere few months.

[EFerrari]

WaHo 6/20:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/19/AR2009061903400.html?wprss=rss_world/southamerica

[zeemike]

32. But could that be because the people are eating more

Now that more of them have jobs or land to farm and that poverty is down? I mean one of the first thing people do that are in poverty is buy more food.

[Cerridwen]

8. Here's one of the threads from last time.

Guess what? It's talking about the same poor guy.

Guess what again, cali? You were in that thread, too.

Didn't these look a little similar to you?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x16422#16444

[Spazito]

19. Well done!

It certainly is an informative thread. It is interesting the article used in the link you provided is written by the same reporter in this OP. I appreciated the work done by the posters in the link you provided to educate as to the REAL facts. Here is one good example of that, imo:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=405&topic_id=16422&mesg_id=16445

[Cerridwen]

23. On many levels, it seems.

The link you posted was the reply in that thread to none other than the OP of this thread.

[Ichingcarpenter]

9. NPR

still has agents from the CIA working for them and with them.

not surprising from what the CIA does, but I guess you know that from your tea services working 9 hour days in the country at your restaurant?

[Pavulon]

11. Thats cool, when they collapse ADM can sell them the split

it is obvious when you place people with no agriculture background on arable land what happens. We have plenty of surplus to sell them.

[Ichingcarpenter]

16. People can be educated and trained which they are doing

Which the article doesn't go into.


you have been trained too.

But we know who trained you.

[Pavulon]

17. Sesame Street?

the count was very informative. They can use their petro income to pay for the lack of production that will result of chavez securing power by redistribution of stuff that he does not own.

[zeemike]

35. And why do the people that live there not own the land

and it's resources?
Have you ever thought about that?

[conspirator]

12. delete

[Pavulon]

15. Why? Just watch their imports.. Time will tell the truth

no politics, just lost capacity. Hey i am sure an american farmer will take that petro dollar.

[EFerrari]

24. Time is telling the truth. 22 quarters of growth, reduction in poverty

per the UN, and now the inflation rate is going down some finally.

The thing is, there are plenty of valid criticisms to be made of the Venezuelan government. They aren't doing enough about violent crime. They aren't diversifying fast enough, although that's harder now in this global economy. Chavez and his party need to put more leaders more out front and center, although again, if they did, who knows if we'd ever hear about it.

But these shallow hit pieces are just the same thing over and over again. They make easily debunked accusations and their sole purpose it to dirty up Chavez's image.

[ShadesOfGrey]

28. You win EFarrari! Tellin it like it is :-) Luv Ya!

[me b zola]

38. +1

:thumbsup:

[Pavulon]

39. Yep, time will tell.

NPR is evil, chavez is jesus. I'll will wait this out.

[Odin2005]

20. Gee, give land to people who don't understand the science and business of modern farming...

...and that is inevitable result. Here in the US 150 yeas ago we created countless numbers of local agricultural colleges for farmers to teach them the science and business of farming.

[EFerrari]

25. You must have missed the whole part where this article is bs. lol

[ShadesOfGrey]

26. I'm gunna unrec this because of bias...

Hugo has it right. The land and resources of a county belong to ALL citizens not just the upper few (and the foreign interests) that can afford to buy them. There is bound to be pluses and minuses when tranfering control from corporations to individual farmers. I don't buy this article as a whole. There might be a few hickups along the way but letting the people of Venezuela take over what corporations use to control is admirable and just. Viva La Chavez!

[Freddie Stubbs]

29. Give it some time. If took several years for the land redistribution in Zimbabwe to take effect

[EFerrari]

34. How can you possibly even compare the two?

They couldn't be more different.

Good grief.

The Venezuelan government was swimming in corruption when Chavez was elected in a more transparent election than Obama had. It's still corrupt as hell and zero of that corruption is attached to Chavez or his cabinet or even to elected members of his party nationwide.

After ten years, doesn't that tell you something?

That government is trying a lot of new things. Some of them will be awful big failures. That happens.

But the government isn't hiking wealth up to the top, they aren't holding political prisoners, they're engaging their region vigorously with respect to trade and development. They've pushed minority rights -- women, indigenous, GLBT, disabled -- in the Assembly for the first time, they kicked out the DEA so they could do real drug interdiction and last month handed over #5 on the list of world drug traffickers. I give them a lot of credit for what they've taken on.

If you don't like Chavez because he can seem bombastic, that's fine. But trashing his government on balance is sort of irrational. It's one of the very best Venezuela has ever had and it's contributed to development all over Latin America.

[zeemike]

37. Best in terms of the peoples welfare

But not best for busness...and that is the problem, and the reason why he takes a lot of heat.
At some point we will have to face the fact that people should come first.

[EFerrari]

40. I don't know that I take that as an article of faith.

It's bad for the old way of doing business, at any cost to the people, yes. Very bad for that model and that's why Chavez is today a big fat demon in the corporate media.

But what we're doing here isn't working even more spectacularly. How many retail outlets that we all know have disappeared just in the last six months?

[zeemike]

41. It is not working here because the model depends on consumption

And constant growth.
And it should be obvious that we cannot continue constant growth when we have finite resources. And that is the dilemma we are in, how do we restructure our economy to a more realistic and sustainable model.

[superduperfarleft]

36. Fair and balanced as always, cali. n/t