Chavez Frias inaugurates cooperative vegetable garden projects

www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, March 16, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

President Hugo Chavez Frias has opened a DIY vegetable garden project at the Fuerte Tiuna military barracks (where the Ayala battalion is housed) as an effort to get people to grow food in spaces that have been abandoned.

It's part of the President's “Pride in Venezuela” project, which was started off by giving small provincial sharecroppers animal stock and seed to help them grow subsistence crops in a home garden.

At the same time, in Caracas, the Municipal Services Corporation has initiated a novel vegetable patch program near the Hilton Hotel in Paseo Vargas.  Service chief Jose Rodriguez says the idea is to plant and sow lettuce, paprika, coriander and Swiss chard ... the San Agustin cooperative is in overall charge of the project, which hopes to produce quick-cycle vegetables on 4,500 sq. meters of earth in 30-45 days ... an underground water cistern has been built for irrigation purposes by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as a first stage “creating social use for idle spaces.”

The idea of family or cooperative vegetable gardens is not new in Venezuela ... in the 80s a Roman Catholic priest started a gardening project among peasant families in Lara State farming district that was a huge success.