Agriculture in Venezuela
Encyclopedia
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
in the early twentieth century to the 1940s, the importance of agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
declined rapidly, and with the beginning of large-scale industrial development in the 1940s, agriculture and land reform
Land reform
[Image:Jakarta farmers protest23.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Farmers protesting for Land Reform in Indonesia]Land reform involves the changing of laws, regulations or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution,...
was largely neglected by successive governments (although a 1960 land reform law did see 200,000 families receive land, largely in the early 1960s). The country imports most of its food, mainly from Colombia and the United States. Since 1999, under the Bolivarian Revolution
Bolivarian Revolution
The “Bolivarian Revolution” refers to a leftist social movement and political process in Venezuela led by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, the founder of the Fifth Republic Movement...
of President Hugo Chávez
Hugo Chávez
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías is the 56th and current President of Venezuela, having held that position since 1999. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when he became the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela...
, agriculture has had a somewhat higher priority.
History
Prior to the 1950s and the initiation of large-scale oil exports, agriculture, fishing, and forestry were central to the Venezuelan economy, producing more than half the gross domestic productGross domestic product
Gross domestic product refers to the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period. GDP per capita is often considered an indicator of a country's standard of living....
(GDP). As late as the 1930s, agriculture still provided 22 percent of GDP and occupied 60 percent of the labor force. As the petrochemical industry expanded rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s, however, the proportion of the labor force in agriculture dropped from one-fifth to about one-tenth. By 1988 agriculture contributed only 5.9 percent of GDP, employed 13 percent of the labor force, and furnished barely 1 percent of total exports. Agriculture has continued to decline, accounting for about 5 percent of GDP and 10 percent of employment in 2004. According to a 1997 government survey, 3.4m hectares of land are suitable for farming (and a further 17.1m hectares suitable for pasture) - but only 0.7m hectares were employed in grain production.
Venezuela saw several attempts at land reform
Land reform
[Image:Jakarta farmers protest23.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Farmers protesting for Land Reform in Indonesia]Land reform involves the changing of laws, regulations or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution,...
before 1998. During the brief first period of democracy (1945–48), the Democratic Action
Democratic Action
Democratic Action is a centrist Venezuelan political party established in 1941. The party and its antecedents played an important role in the early years of Venezuelan democracy, and led the government during Venezuela's first democratic period...
government redistributed land which it said had been gained illicitly by members of previous governments, and in mid-1948 it enacted an agrarian reform law. Most of the land redistributed in this way was returned to its previous owners during the 1948-58 dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez
Marcos Pérez Jiménez
Marcos Evangelista Pérez Jiménez was a soldier and Presidents of Venezuela from 1952 to 1958.-Career:Marcos Evangelista Pérez Jiménez was born in Michelena, Táchira State. His father, Juan Pérez Bustamante, was a farmer; his mother, Adela Jiménez, a schoolteacher...
. After the 1958 restoration of democracy, a new land reform law was enacted in March 1960, with reform in the early 1960s concentrated in the northeastern states of Miranda
Miranda (state)
Miranda State is one of the 23 states into which Venezuela is divided. It is ranked second in population among Venezuelan states, after Zulia State. In June 30, 2010, it had approximately 2,987,968 residents. It also has the greatest Human Development Index in Venezuela, according to the...
, Aragua
Aragua
* Aragua State, Venezuela* Aragua de Maturín* Aragua River* Aragua Municipality, Anzoátegui State, Venezuela* Aragua de Barcelona, Anzoátegui State, Venezuela* Aragua Fútbol Club* Aragua Glass Frog...
and Carabobo
Carabobo
Carabobo State is one of the 23 states of Venezuela, located in the north of the country, about two hours by car from Caracas. The capital city of this state is Valencia, which is also the country's main industrial center. The state's area is 4,650 km² and had an estimated population of...
, and coming largely from expropriated private landholdings. The reform was accompanied by a considerable increase in agricultural production. Ultimately the reform saw about 200,000 families receive transfers of land, largely in the early 1960s.
Bolivarian Revolution
Venezuela's present-day agriculture is characterized by inefficiency and low investment, with 70 percent of agricultural land owned by 3 percent of agricultural proprietors (one of the highest levels of land concentration in Latin America). According to the Land and Agricultural Reform Law of 2001 (see Mission ZamoraMission Zamora
Mission Zamora is an integrated land reform and land redistribution program in Venezuela, created in law by the Ley de Tierras , part of a package of 49 decrees made by Hugo Chávez in November 2001...
), public and private land deemed to be illegally held or unproductive is to be redistributed. From 1999 to 2006, 130 landless workers were assassinated by sicarios paid by opponents to the reform. As of January 2009, the Venezuelan government had redistributed nearly 2.7 million hectares of idle land (6.6 million acres—nearly 1/3 of the latifundio land existing prior to 1998) to 180,000 landless peasant families.
A new Bolivarian Mission, Mission Vuelta al Campo
Mission Vuelta al Campo
Mission Vuelta al Campo is one of the Bolivarian Missions implemented by current Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez...
was announced in 2005; it seeks to encourage impoverished and unemployed urban Venezuelans to willingly return to the countryside. This has involved using land recovered from private owners where ownership could not be demonstrated, as well as nationalisation. For example in 2008 the government expropriated El Frio, a 63,000 hectare estate in Apure
Apure
Apure State is one of the 23 states into which Venezuela is divided. Its territory formed part of the provinces of Mérida, Maracaibo, and Barinas, in accordance with successive territorial ordinations pronounced by the colonial authorities. In 1824 the Department of Apure was created, under...
(larger than the tourist island of Isla Margarita
Isla Margarita
Margarita Island is the largest island of the state of Nueva Esparta in Venezuela, situated in the Caribbean Sea, off the northeastern coast of the country. The state also contains two other smaller islands: Coche and Cubagua. The capital city of Nueva Esparta is La Asunción, located in a river...
), as its owners (reputed to include Nelson Rockefeller
Nelson Rockefeller
Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was the 41st Vice President of the United States , serving under President Gerald Ford, and the 49th Governor of New York , as well as serving the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations in a variety of positions...
) could not demonstrate legal land title. The Venezuelan government has also employed foreign expertise to develop Venezuela's agricultural potential, for example by working with Vietnamese agronomists
Agronomy
Agronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants for food, fuel, feed, fiber, and reclamation. Agronomy encompasses work in the areas of plant genetics, plant physiology, meteorology, and soil science. Agronomy is the application of a combination of sciences like biology,...
to develop planting techniques and rice seed hybrids appropriate to Venezuelan agricultural conditions. The land reform program has nevertheless been the subject of criticism from a variety of sources, with farmers said to be lacking sufficient government support, particularly in the case of urban residents moving to the countryside to develop farming cooperatives.
By 2008, Venezuela was self-sufficient in its two most important grains, corn and rice, with production increases of 132% for corn and between 71-94% for rice since 1998. The country also achieved self-sufficiency in pork, representing an increase in production of nearly 77% since 1998. Venezuela is also on its way to reaching self-sufficiency in a number of other important staple foods, including beef, chicken, and eggs, for which domestic production currently meets 70%, 85%, and 80% of national demand, respectively. Milk production has increased by 900% to 1.96 million tons, fulfilling 55 percent of national demand. Many other crops have seen significant increases over the past decade, including black beans (143%), root vegetables (115%), and sunflowers for cooking oil production (125 percent).
In 2010 the government announced that there had been a 48% increase in lands under cultivation since 1998. Over the same periods, production of some staples had increased substantially: "Rice production has risen by 84%, reaching nearly 1.3 million tons yearly while milk production has risen to 2.18 million tons, a 47% increase."
After the 2010 parliamentary elections
Venezuelan parliamentary election, 2010
The 2010 parliamentary election in Venezuela took place on 26 September 2010 to elect the 165 deputies to the National Assembly. Venezuelan opposition parties, which had boycotted the previous election, thus allowing the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela to gain a two-thirds...
, the Venezuelan government stepped up efforts to restructure the agricultural sector, nationalising the country's largest agricultural supply company (renaming it Agropatria
Agropatria
Agropatria is Venezuela's largest agricultural supply company, supplying fertilizer, seeds and agrochemicals, as well as loans to agricultural producers...
) and fertilizer company (FertiNitro
FertiNitro
FertiNitro is Venezuela's largest fertilizer company, producing around 1.5m tons of urea per year. It was nationalised in October 2010, having previously been owned by Pequiven and Koch Industries...
).