Venezuela : No Fuel, No Agriculture : Hunger
"It can't be possible that the country is going without food and here we are with 6,000 hectares of vegetables, paralyzed."
Augusto Alarcon, head, Peublo Llano farmers' cooperative
"The collapse [of Venezuela's main crops: corn and rice] is exponential."
"The only possible explanation is that the government simply doesn't care."
Aquiles Hopkins, president, Fedeagro
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Venezuela’s
Pueblo Llano municipality has accounted for about 60 percent of all the
potato and carrot production in the country. But this year’s harvest is
only half of 2018’s because of shortages of gasoline, seeds, fertilizer
and other supplies. Credit Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times
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"While I'm sitting here in line, my produce is rotting in the fields. I got nothing to harvest with", complained farmer Richard Rondon, giving away summer squash from the back of his pickup truck, as he waited in line along with another 150 cars outside the closed gas station in Pueblo Llano for the sixth day straight. Some drivers took to sleeping in their cars to prevent robberies and fearful of missing that brief period when the gas station would re-open and its scarce stock depleted in a few sales to those closest to the beginning of the line-up.
Recently one farmer turned over thousands of shriveled carrots. Shrivelled because they were past their distribution date. The truck that was contracted to pick them up never arrived and the carrots simply sat there, harvested, but the farmer was unable to take them to market. There was no fuel to power the trucks to carry agricultural products to ease the hunger of Venezuelans. With less availability of vegetables in season, people have turned to staples like rice and pasta and processed corn to fill their bellies.
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In this time of high food scarcity the price of carrots, potatoes and plantains has increased exponentially, where a 54-kilogram sack of potatoes now costs five times the monthly minimum wage. The substitute staples can still be obtained through the government's subsidized food boxes. Transporting potatoes from Pueblo Llano to Caracas has now more than tripled, points out Oswaldo Garcia, a vegetable wholesaler who two years ago operated a fleet of 70 trucks taking 120 kinds of fresh vegetables across Venezuela and who today operates 15 trucks.
The country has been in the grip of a fuel shortage since May, resulting in the agriculture industry brought to the brink of collapse. Half the population goes hungry, with an estimated four million Venezuelans leaving the country for haven in neighbouring countries as food refugees. Venezuela represents the failure of an oil-rich nation to manage its resources and reinvest in updating infrastructure to modernize the industry. Corruption in government, in the oil industry, has left gas stations dry.
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With no availability of gas, farmers cannot get produce to markets and now they cannot even sow new crops, using farm machinery that requires a source of energy. Pueblo Llano, in the Andes Mountains of western Venezuela, accounted for some 60 percent of all potato and carrot production in the country, but this year's harvest represents a mere half of 2018's. Further east, sugar cane rots in the field and rice fields are barren for the first time in 70 years thanks to a shortage of seeds and fertilizers for new crops, or fuel to transport produce to distribution centers.
Labels: Agriculture, Corruption, Dysfunction, Gas Production, Hunger, Venezuela
posted by Pieface @ Friday, July 19, 2019
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