Venezuela Starts Farming Program to Boost National Production

Venezuela Starts Farming Program to Boost National Production
By Charlie Devereux - Jan 29, 2011

President Hugo Chavez began a new social program today in a bid to kick-start Venezuela’s flagging domestic agricultural production.

Almost 14,000 agricultural producers have registered with the so-called Mision AgroVenezuela, which will provide loans, subsidized raw materials and technical advice.

About 70 percent of what Venezuelans eat is imported and the nation is looking to boost food production in order to slow an inflation rate that is the highest of 78 economies tracked by Bloomberg. The cost of food is the principal driver of inflation, according to a report by Venezuela’s central bank.

“Mision AgroVenezuela was born to give power to the small producers,” Chavez said in comments carried on state television.

He said the agriculture program aims to raise production to a minimum of 50 percent.

Venezuela on Jan. 1 devalued its currency by weakening the exchange rate on so-called essential goods such as food and medicine by 40 percent to 4.3 bolivars per dollar, unifying its two fixed foreign exchange rates in bid to pull the economy out of a two-year recession.

Chavez, who has expropriated food processors, stores and more than 6 million acres (2.5 million hectares) of farms and ranches as the government battles food shortages, in October nationalized the country’s largest farm-supply business, Agroislena C.A. Sucesora de Enrique Fraga Afonso. He accused the company of creating “an oligopoly in the agricultural raw materials market.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Charlie Devereux in Caracas at cdevereux3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Joshua Goodman at jgoodman19@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2011-01-29/venezuela-starts-farming-program-to-boost-national-production.html
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/jat
Knowledge shall make you free
El conocimiento te hará libre
.

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