Venezuela’s paradox: People are hungry, but farmers can’t feed themPolitical | 206886 hits | May 27 10:15 am | Posted by: N_Fiddledog Commentsview comments in forum Page 1 You need to be a member of CKA and be logged into the site, to comment on news. |
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/th ... nes&wpmm=1
"YUMA, Venezuela — With cash running low and debts piling up, Venezuela’s socialist government has cut back sharply on food imports. And for farmers in most countries, that would present an opportunity.
But this is Venezuela, whose economy operates on its own special plane of dysfunction. At a time of empty supermarkets and spreading hunger, the country’s farms are producing less and less, not more, making the caloric deficit even worse..."
Having attempted for years to defy conventional economics, the country now faces a painful reckoning with basic arithmetic.
“Last year I had 200,000 hens,” said Saulo Escobar, who runs a poultry and hog farm here in the state of Aragua, an hour outside Caracas. “Now I have 70,000.”
Saulo Escobar holds an egg produced at his farm. His chickens are laying undersized eggs, he says, because as imported feed dwindles the only feed he can afford on the black market is less nutritious. (Mariana Zuñiga for The Washington Post)
Several of his cavernous henhouses sit empty because, Escobar said, he can’t afford to buy more chicks or feed. Government price controls have made his business unprofitable, and armed gangs have been squeezing him for extortion payments and stealing his eggs.
Venezuela’s latest public health indicators confirm that the country is facing a dietary calamity. With medicines scarce and malnutrition cases soaring, more than 11,000 babies died last year, sending the infant mortality rate up 30 percent, according to Venezuela’s Health Ministry. The head of the ministry was fired by President Nicolás Maduro two days after she released those statistics.
Child hunger in parts of Venezuela is a “humanitarian crisis,” according to a new report by the Catholic relief organization Caritas, which found 11.4 percent of children under age 5 suffering from moderate to severe malnutrition, and 48 percent “at risk” of going hungry...