Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez announced that the British bovine company Agroflora will be expropriated with immediate effect (terra.com.ve)
During a live broadcast from state-television channel Vive, the Venezuelan president announced that the company’s 290,000 hectares of farmland would be expropriated and brought under direct “operational and administrative control” of the state through the country’s Food Security and Sovereignty Law. This legislation allows the government to forcefully expropriate land in “exceptional circumstances” relating to issues of national food security and the public good.
“This is social property, it cannot be converted, as they have done, into property for just a few people, so they can enrich themselves whilst polluting waterways and rivers,” said Chavez from the live programme in Aragua.
According to the Venezuelan president, the move to nationalise the business comes after a breakdown in compensation negotiations between the state and the Vestey group, due to the English company’s demands that reparations for the land be paid in US dollars.
“This is the option [forced expropriation], because they don’t want to negotiate and they are asking us for dollars, well, it’s going to have to be forced expropriation then,” said Chavez, who stressed that the company would still receive compensation from the government in Venezuela’s national currency.
“We’re going to undertake a fair evaluation and then we’ll pay them,” he added.
Despite this, the Ranchers Federation of Venezuela has criticised the decision as a “new attack against production and property” in Venezuela and stated that the British business had tried to maintain “friendly relations” with the government.
Classified as highly fertile type A1 lands, the eleven ranches currently used by the company for cattle grazing are most appropriate for the cultivation of basic food staples, such as coffee and vegetables.
“Extensive cattle farming of cows and buffalos should be done on a different kind of land where the animals can feed on quality pastures, but not on type A1 pastures, which are apt for a different type of agricultural activity,” commented Braulio Alvarez, PSUV representative in the National Assembly and former leader of the Ezequiel Zamora Peasant Front.
According to government estimates, the nationalisation of the land will increase the national distribution of meat and create extensive employment opportunities. Over 500.000 cattle workers are also expected to benefit directly from the nationalisation.
The current Lord Vestey is the great grandson of William Vestey, who in 1897 founded the company.
Social Production Business Created in Tacariguas
As well as the expropriation of Agroflora, the Venezuelan president also announced the creation of a “Social Production Business” (EPS) in Tacariguas on the border between Aragua and Carabobo state. Over 13,000 hectares of land currently used for commercial purposes will be expropriated to make way for the EPS, which will also require a degree of state-sponsored industrialisation.
“In Aragua, there will be 8566 hectares [expropriated] and in Carabobo 5190, which integrate 10 social productive companies. We have to keep going into all of these valleys and combating the latifundio [large landed-estates] and the use of the best lands in the Tacarigua valley,” stated the president, who also approved funds for agricultural projects in the Quibor valley and the expropriation of pig farms alongside the polluted Aragua River.
Of the ten social productive units that will make up the EPS are the Manuelita Saenz collective (210 hectares) and the Cacique Guaicaipuro collective (847 hectares).
Chavez confirmed that the lands had previously been in the hands of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie who were not using the terrain effectively and were damaging the environment and the region’s waterways.
The Need for Food Sovereignty
These expropriations are the latest step in the government’s policy to promote food sovereignty and increase domestic agricultural production in Venezuela, which suffers historically from a weak agricultural sector related to the high profitability of its oil industry.
Throughout the 20th century, there was an influx of foreign currency occasioned by the discovery of oil, rendering agricultural activities non-competitive and increasing national demand over and above the capabilities of national production. When Chavez came to power in 1999, Venezuela was almost totally reliant on imports in order to meet the population’s basic food needs.
Since then, the Bolivarian government has implemented a series of initiatives aimed at stimulating domestic agricultural production and stemming Venezuela’s historical reliance on expensive imports from the West.
Some of the government’s projects include Agropatria and mission AgroVenezuela, aimed at helping small rural producers and stimulating the production of staple crops and urban agriculture. The government has also encouraged South-South trade, with agriculture now constituting one of the main areas of trade between member countries of the ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America).
Yet, the Venezuelan president told viewers that the expropriations were not just a matter of increasing national production, but a further step towards creating a socialist society.
“Che (Guevara) got it right, this isn’t just about building houses, or cement blo
cks, or producing cornflower or clothes, it’s about producing something beyond all that, a new type of man, a type of new woman, a new society”.
VESTEY GROUP FACTFILE
● William Vestey (later Lord Vestey) and his younger brother Edmund established the Vestey empire in 1897 from a family butchery business in Liverpool. They were a pioneer of refrigeration, opening a cold store in London in 1895.
● They produced meats, dairy products, frozen vegetables, bakery products, food services and trading, and significant cattle ranching and sugar cane farming interests in Brazil and Venezuela.
● The Vestey brothers were initially sent to South America in an attempt to make their fortune because the economy there was booming. They started by buying game birds and storing them in the cold stores of American companies before shipping them to Liverpool.
● Sam, Lord Vestey, born 19 March 1941, is the great grandson of the 1st Lord Vestey, and the current head of the family and Chairman of the Group. He owns the 6,000 acre (24 km²) Stowell Park Estate at Stowell Park, Gloucestershire, valued at £15,000,000 as well as a villa in Nice and a Townhouse in Belgravia.
Vestey was founded in 1897 by two brothers, William and Edmund Vestey, who identified the need for sourcing from overseas large quantities of quality, affordable food to feed the rapidly growing British population at the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Between 1913 and 1920 the brothers acquired pastoral land in Venezuela, Australia and Brazil and additional freezing works in New Zealand, Argentina and Madagascar in order to supply the British market with beef.
Today it has a turnover of $770million, or £486million with interests around the globe.
Since his election in 1999 Chavez has instituted a policy of seizing foreign-owned assets such as public utilities, mines, factories and media outlets, an operation which opponents claim is politically motivated.
Last year Chavez’s government paid $1 billion (£620million) for Banco de Venezuela, a division of Spanish bank Grupo Santander, to help him channel state resources.
In 2007 the government took a majority stake in four heavy crude projects worth tens of billions of dollars in the vast Orinoco oil belt. The grab meant oil giants Exxon Mobil Corp and ConocoPhillips quit the country and filed arbitration claims for compensation.
Chavez has also taken over the Hilton hotel in the capital Caracas and renamed the 36-storey building Alba, or ‘Dawn’.
His grab of Vestey’s assets comes days after his ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela failed to maintain his powerful two-thirds majority in the general election due to inroads made by a coalition of opposition parties.
Venezuela's oil-rich economy continues to shrink while most others in Latin American have been recovering from the global financial meltdown and inflation is running at nearly 30 per cent.
Published on Nov 1st 2011 at 11.35am
(Venezuelanalysis.com)