A combination of government support and community food growing initiatives is changing the face of the Venezuela’s food sustainability. Miriam Ross shares a taste of the results.
By Heidi Chow - World Development Movement, Aug 2nd 2012
Over the last 12 years, the socialist government of Hugo Chavez has been attempting to rebuild Venezuela’s agricultural sector and has included the radical concept of food sovereignty into the country's new constitution. Food sovereignty is a concept that originates in the global south and presents a positive alternative to our broken global food system which is dominated by the multinational food companies who grow food in a way that is unsustainable, leads to hunger and damages the environment.
The following set of images were taken by Evergreen State College on their latest trip to Venezuela, where they visited a number of Venezuelan farming cooperatives aimed at securing food sovereignty. The images include a cacao cooperative in Barlovento and an agroecology site near the western state of Merida.
In a bid to provide more protection for coffee-producers and to deepen its initiatives to secure national food sovereignty, the Venezuelan government has approved the creation of a state-run coffee chain.
Venezuela’s urban agriculture program has seen urban communal and family based food gardens developing rapidly over the last two years, to a current total of 19,000.
Venezuela’s Food Minister Carlos Osorio highlighted last Sunday the role that the revolutionary government of President Hugo Chavez has played in ensuring food security to the nation by providing more than 10 million tons of important staples for the economically disadvantaged.
By Rachael Boothroyd - Venezuelanalysis.com, Feb 1st 2012
Even in a regulated economy such as Venezuela, financial traders and the commercial elite, the same bourgeoisie which Carroll continues to cite as a reliable source on all things Venezuelan at the expense of engaging with ordinary citizens, have found a way of speculating and exploiting the economic situation whilst giving the proverbial finger to the majority of Venezuelans and the national government.
The levels of malnutrition in children have decreased in recent years from 7.6% to 2.91%, thanks to food-focused missions and to the increase in access to subsidised food and drink. Growth levels in Venezuelan children have also increased stated Di Luca.
Venezuela's socialism of the 21st Century and how its applied, on a large scale, in the Comunal Socialist City Simon Bolivar. Located near the city of Guasdualito, Apure state, the communal city includes over 8000 agricultural families, divided into eight communal complexes, over 115,000 hectares.
