Chavez seizes farms from wealthy landowners, to be run as peoples cooperatives

Venezuelan agrarian land reforms continue. Publicly owned land has already been given to hundreds and thousands of farmers. Based on a 2001 land law that allows the government to expropriate land if judged either idle or unproductive, the Venezuelan government is now seizing privately owned farms in the country’s agricultural heartland. The government says the land will be used more efficiently, and workers’ conditions improved. The goal is to transform farms from profit-making enterprises benefiting a few people to co-operatives that support a much broader group of Venezuelans. The picture on the left was taken in 2005. The writing on the wall ‘Englishmen out’  was a movement to displace an English owned farm that was reportedly inefficient, with inadequate working conditions and did not create produce that was of any great benefit to Venezuela. 

Text source: The Ecosocialist