Venezuelans complain that what goes into their Sunday dinner plate comes from abroad: Steak, from Brazil; plantains, the Dominican Republic; rice, South Africa; Parmesan cheese, Uruguay; oats, Chile. Even coffee, in a country famed for it, often is Colombian.
It’s a complaint heard often these days as Hugo Chavez‘s hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, seeks election against opposition candidate Henrique Capriles. Under the socialist government, shoppers cannot count on finding sugar, cornmeal for Venezuela‘s beloved arepas and other goods when they go to market.
Those shoppers will be casting ballots Sunday in an election in which food security is a key issue, along with crime and power outages.
“You can’t find anything,” said Ermis Rodriguez, a 76-year-old retiree who walked away from the chicken legs on offer at a meat stand inside Caracas’ bustling Guaicapuro Market. “I voted for Chavez, but I’m not voting for Maduro. Things are getting worse.”
Chavez, who died March 5, made agrarian reform a pillar of his “revolution” and vowed to turn Venezuela into a self-sufficient, food-exporting power. His government expropriated 2.3 million hectares (5.7 million acres) of farmland over the last 12 years that he said were misused. He nationalized food-producing companies whose owners he claimed were gouging the people, conspiring against his government, or both. For some products such as rice and coffee, the government-controlled market share has ranged from 40 percent to 75 percent.
For the past seven years, Venezuela, a major oil exporter, has seen sporadic shortages of some basic foods like milk and butter. The country of 30 million people still imports nearly 70 percent of its food. And it has to import products it did not need to before Chavez, including beef, coffee and rice.
While Venezuela was nearly self-sufficient in beef 15 years ago, it now imports nearly half the beef it consumes, said Manuel Cipriano, president of the national cattle ranchers’ association. The government and some pro-Chavez agricultural groups dispute that figure but still put it at least 30 percent. Last year alone, frozen beef imports increased nearly 150 percent, according to government figures posted on the ranchers’ association’s website. That has pushed up beef prices.
Gerardo Barreto, president of the Chamber of Industry of the central state of Carabobo, said Chavez gutted Venezuela‘s coffee industry by expropriating its major players, in one stroke diminishing and degrading the product as companies with decades of know-how were replaced by state conglomerates lacking expertise.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News