‘This regime has to go. It kills our farms… and kills our people’
When they took Marisela Febres’ first farm, it was painful. The 3,500-hectare estate in Venezuela’s agricultural heartland had been in the family for more than 100 years. It was a productive, lovingly tended finca. Expropriated in 2008 by the government, it is now a barren wasteland.
When they came for her second farm, it was devastating. The 749 hectares of La Primavera produced three tons of maize, 9,000kg of yucca, and supported dozens of locals in Barinas state. Since it was invaded in 2016 it, too, has gone to ruin.
“I felt so impotent,” says Ms Febres. “I think I’m still in shock.”
Last year, her third farm was also seized by pro-government thugs, but after an eight-month fight she convinced police to oust them. Today, she surveys the wreckage: dead cows, torched fields and tractors with their parts ripped out.
This tropical country of 30million
people, around the size of Nigeria, once had a flourishing food production industry.
Almost everything grew here: maize and yucca, potatoes and sugar, vegetables and fruits. Coffee, cacao and rice were exported to regional neighbours; meat was abundant.
Up until 2007, Venezuela produced 70 per cent of what it consumed. But in recent years more than five million hectares of farmland have been stolen or expropriated, according to studies.
“This year we’re not even going to produce 10 per cent of what we need. And those farmers who continue are heroes,” says Andres Eloy Camejo, a rancher and an opposition deputy representing Barinas.
“The petro-boom hid the crisis for a while. But now it’s on full display.”
It is not just land that now belongs to the state. Farmers have been crippled by the government taking over control of seeds, fertiliser and imports of machinery.
Powerful and successful agricultural companies were nationalised. Now farmers rely on the government to provide seeds, which often arrive late, or are the wrong type, or are delivered in insufficient quantities.
“They’ve dismantled the supply chain,” says Mr Camejo. And it’s not just large landowners like him that are affected.
Nori Rivas, 52, ekes out a living on five hectares, planting whatever seeds the government delivers – she has no
‘This year we are not even going to produce a tenth of what we need. The petro-boom hid the crisis for a while but now it is on full display’
say over it – and tending to her 60 chickens, pigs, and ducks.
“It’s really, really hard,” she says. “Before we had good seeds, and lots of fertiliser. Now we don’t know what’s going on. The prices of all the supplies are rising by the hour.”
Those farmers who keep hold of their property face a further threat from thieves and cattle-raiders. Two or three of Ms Febres’s 600 remaining cattle are poached per week, with the meat going to the black market or, she thinks, to feed starving locals.
The struggle spreads across the country. Average Venezuelans earn 40,000 Bolivars (£5.70) a month. A kilo of tomatoes costs 4,500 Bolivars in Barinas; a dozen eggs 20,000.
Meanwhile prices keep rising. The International Monetary Fund expects the inflation rate to reach 10million per cent in 2019, one of the worst cases of hyperinflation in modern history.
This has exacerbated the country’s inability to import food. As Venezuela funds most agricultural imports through oil sales, the collapse in the
‘If you are in control of land you have to produce on it. Now we have shameless people who invade and destroy farms’
crude price had already eaten away at the availability of produce.
Almost half the Venezuelan population now rely on boxes of rice, pasta and oil imported from Mexico and distributed by local Committees for Supply and Production (CLAP).
These CLAP boxes often arrive half-empty. Under what is known as the “Maduro diet” – named after the country’s president since 2013, Nicolás Maduro – eight in 10 households do not have enough to eat.
Mrs Febres knows the situation is desperate. Yesterday UN agencies reported that four million Venezuelans had fled the country since 2015.
“If you are in control of land you have to produce on it – you have to grow food or raise animals, and benefit the people,” she said.
“Now we have a group of absolutely shameless people who dedicate themselves to invading and destroying farms, ruining the agricultural sector.
“This regime has to go, and not just [Nicolás] Maduro. They’re wiping out production. And killing the people.”