Communes and social movements have demanded that the government combat the assassination of rural activists in the mountains of western Venezuela, which they say is undermining communal organising in the region.
Two rural activists were murdered in Venezuela last Friday, which a national rural workers’ organisation is attributing to the activists’ role in combating contraband and price speculation.
Three hundred and twenty Venezuelan technicians trained with support from the United Nations World Food and Agriculture Organisation are being put to work to improve domestic agricultural productivity, President Nicolas Maduro announced yesterday.
The alleged murder of a rural worker in Lara state is the latest in a series of killings allegedly linked to paramilitaries in the far north of the Andes, according to a local human rights group.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) recognized Venezuela as one of 18 countries that had achieved exceptional progress toward reducing the prevalence of malnutrition at its headquarters in Rome earlier today.
The Venezuelan government will continue its efforts to increase national food production and combat the use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) through a new Law on Seeds, president of the Agri-Food Development Subcommittee for the National Assembly Alfredo Ureña announced on Friday.
Landless peasants from the western state of Lara announced they were relaunching the “war on latifundio” last week when hundreds of them invaded and occupied a large estate belonging to the local elite.
Following the murder of indigenous Yukpa leader Sabino Romero three weeks ago, a committee of 17 Yukpa met yesterday with the minister for foreign affairs, Elias Jaua, who promised to make payments so their lands could be inhabited by them.
Indigenous Yupka chief and land rights activist Sabino Romero has been assassinated in an act which has generated public repudiation from social movements and the Venezuelan government alike. A high profile investigation into the killing has been launched.
Following a situation of some minor food shortages, combined with a private media campaign to present the situation as more serious, Venezuelan government representatives have met with private producers in order to resolve the situation.
The Venezuelan government has accelerated its policy of land expropriations so far this year and intends to continue this trend in 2013, according to budget information from the National Land Institute (INTI).
The Venezuelan government has announced that it will hold an assembly with the Yukpa indigenous group in order to resolve the ongoing conflict over land rights in the western region of Perijá.
Thousands of peasant workers took to the streets of Caracas last Thursday to hand over a list of programmatic suggestions to the government and to show their support for current Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
The President of Venezuela’s National Land Institute (INTI), Luis Motta Dominguez, affirmed that more than 224,000 families have benefited from redistributed farmlands made available through the Chavez administration’s agrarian reform program.
