Government is farming in downtown Caracas but food production collapses
<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Thursday, June 05, 2003 By: Gustavo Coronel
VHeadline.com commentarist Gustavo Coronel writes: As I receive a report from the Associated Press titled "Cultivating Caracas," which deals with the attempts made by the government to "farm in Caracas," I see on TV that the Deputy Minister of Agriculture has been fired ... he is being fired because he criticized food price controls imposed by the government ... he said that price controls had produced a sharp decline in agricultural and animal production and should be revised.
- Of course, the President fired him and rightly so ... a dissenting public officer has no place in this government. However, the bureaucrat was right.
The decline in food production in Venezuela can not be reversed by means of the isolated patches of land being farmed in Caracas behind wire fences, to prevent the access of the ordinary people. As a result, what could be a welcome manner to beautify the ugly city, has become a new symbol of discrimination.
I met briefly with former Minister of Agriculture Hiram Gaviria ... a former Chavez Ambassador to France ... and he had this to say about the situation of food production in the country at this point in time:
The value of total agricultural production, which includes vegetable, animal, fisheries and forestry products, has been systematically declining. FEDEAGRO, the national association of rural producers, claims that the decline was in the order of 5.1% in 2001 and 4.8% in 2002 ... practically 10% in the last two years.
- In 2002, rice production came down 12.3%; corn a disastrous 30.2%; sorghum 29%; coffee 9.8%; milk 4.1% and beef 5.8% ... there were increases in sugar cane 7%, chickens 0.3% and pork 4%.
The area under cultivation has gone from 2 million hectares in 1998 to less than 1.6 million hectares in 2002. During the 1999-2002 period 240,000 jobs have been lost in rural areas and in the food industry at large, going from 1.2 million to 960,000.
This year, 2003, the agricultural sector is expected to shrink another 6%. We are already in the wet season and there is no action from the government to promote production, beyond speeches and vague promises. The growers, who used to plant during the winter cycle, lack seeds, fertilizers and agrochemical products which are essential to their work. Financing is very scarce and expensive, and contracts to buy the crops are practically non-existent.
Animal population is also declining ... beef cattle has gone from 13 million head in 1994 to 11.4 million in 2003. Dairy cows have declined 3% due to increasing cost of feed, medicines, machinery and electricity. These two sectors are particularly hard hit by the dangerous living conditions in rural areas, where cattle rustling, kidnappings and land invasions have reached record high proportions. According to FENAVI, the federation of chicken producers, production has gone down 14% between Q1 2002 and the Q1 this year.
Food consumption, on the other hand, has also declined significantly, due to decreasing local production, food price controls and the impossibility to acquire foreign currency to import raw materials. Chicken consumption, for example, has gone down from 27.5 kilograms per capita in 2002 to a projected 18.5 kilograms per capita this year. Egg consumption has decreased from 117 units per capita in 2002 to some 110 units per capita this year. Beef cattle producers in FEDENAGA say that beef consumption has declined from 18.2 kilograms per capita in 2002 to 17.2 kilograms this year ... there is evident scarcity of basic items such as pasta, bread, chicken, eggs, corn flour, vegetable oils, rice and other grains.
To face this disastrous situation the government has chosen to directly import large amounts of food, rather than promoting local production. Chicken is coming from Brazil and also from China. Wheat flour is coming from Italy. Milk from eastern Europe. Beans from China. Worse still, most of these imports are routed through Cuba and handled by Cuba ... which makes the acquisition costs unnecessarily expensive while transactions lack transparency. Some of the products are wrapped in paper printed with political slogans and are considered by the consumers to be of very low quality. Behaving in this manner, the government violates Constitution Article 299 which protects free competition, Article 301 which prohibits the State from allowing foreign companies or governments better terms than those allowed to nationals and Article 305 which reads that food security will be guaranteed through the promotion of local production.
Venezuela should not be in an agricultural crisis ... it has about 10 million hectares good for farming, rather better than the backyard of the Caracas Hilton. There are tractors, producers and rural roads. What we do not have is a reasonable agricultural policy ... a policy which could be based in no more than 5 points:
- To determine what are our comparative advantages and concentrate on them instead of trying to produce everything, which often amounts to nothing;
- Provide the necessary financial resources to increase production and productivity;
- Coordinate price policies with the participation of both government and producers, not set prices unilaterally;
- Stop invasions of private and producing land and protect private property, and,
- Establish a true alliance between producers and government to really provide food security.
Mr. Gaviria is not optimistic about the possibility that these policy can be put together under this regime. He probably knows what he is talking about since he was a member of Chavez' close political environment up to a year or so ago, when he decided to break away on matters of principle.
The farming of Caracas is no more than a publicity stunt designed to make the ordinary citizen believe that things are being done, while very little is really being done.
No matter what sector we look at, agriculture, mining, petroleum, tourism, education, health, we see the same abysmal incompetence all across the board.
This is the reason why we can not wait patiently to change this government ... each day we wait the country dies a little ... instead of becoming more prosperous.
Governments which promote poverty and unhappiness among the people should be sent to the trash bin of history...
Gustavo Coronel is the founder and president of Agrupacion Pro Calidad de Vida (The Pro-Quality of Life Alliance), a Caracas-based organization devoted to fighting corruption and the promotion of civic education in Latin America, primarily Venezuela. A member of the first board of directors (1975-1979) of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), following nationalization of Venezuela's oil industry, Coronel has worked in the oil industry for 28 years in the United States, Holland, Indonesia, Algiers and in Venezuela. He is a Distinguished alumnus of the University of Tulsa (USA) where he was a Trustee from 1987 to 1999. Coronel led the Hydrocarbons Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in Washington DC for 5 years. The author of three books and many articles on Venezuela ("Curbing Corruption in Venezuela." Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 3, July, 1996, pp. 157-163), he is a fellow of Harvard University and a member of the Harvard faculty from 1981 to 1983. In 1998, he was presidential election campaign manager for Henrique Salas Romer and now lives in retirement on the Caribbean island of Margarita where he runs a leading Hotel-Resort. You may contact Gustavo Coronel at email gustavo@vheadline.com