Cuba Exports City Farming 'Revolution' to Venezuela - Has U.N. Blessing

yahoo.com news ^ | April 26, 2003 | Magdalena Morales, Reuters

[Cincinatus' Wife]

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - In a conference room at Venezuela's military academy, a group of soldiers listen attentively to a pair of Cuban instructors.

The subject being taught is not revolutionary guerrilla warfare as once practiced by Fidel Castro (news - web sites), but the "organoponic farming revolution," communist Cuba's latest export to its closest South American ally, Venezuela.

"Organoponic gardening," a system of concentrated, organic urban vegetable cultivation, is taking root in central Caracas, amid the piles of garbage, bands of homeless beggars and tens of thousands of vehicles belching out polluting gas fumes.

Inspired by Cuba's system of urban market gardens, which has been operating for several years, left-wing President Hugo Chavez has ordered the creation of similar intensive city plots across Venezuela in a bid to develop food self-sufficiency in the world's No. 5 oil exporter.

"Let's sow our cities with organic, hydroponic mini-gardens," said the populist former paratrooper, who survived a brief coup a year ago and toughed out a crippling opposition strike in December and January.

Inside Fuerte Tiuna military headquarters, soldiers of the crack Ayala armored battalion supervised by Cuban instructors have swapped their rifles for shovels and hoes to tend neat rows of lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, coriander and parsley.

Since his election in late 1998, Chavez has drafted the armed forces to serve his self-styled "revolution" in a range of social projects, from providing medical services to running low-cost food markets for the poor.

Besides the military vegetable patch in Fuerte Tiuna, the government has also planted a 1.2 acre (half-hectare) plot in Caracas' downtown Bellas Artes district.

The market garden, denominated "Bolivar 1" in honor of Venezuela's independence hero Simon Bolivar, is being run by an agricultural cooperative set up in a nearby poor neighborhood.

PUBLIC SKEPTICISM

The sight of sprouting vegetables nestling in concrete-lined earth beds behind wire fences in central Caracas causes many passers-by to stare.

"This might be all right to provide for a family but not to feed a country," scoffed Diego Di Coccio, a 40-year-old unemployed businessman.

"They should use the money to unblock the drains," said chemical technician Hector Gonzalez, pointing to the piles of rubbish in the streets around.

Skeptics question why resource-rich Venezuela should need urban vegetable gardens when it has hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile farming land, much not in use.

The national farmers' federation Fedeagro, which groups 52 local associations around the country, says it is not opposed in principle to the urban food program. But it demands more government support for the farming sector, which contracted around 10 percent between 1998 and 2002.

"The problem is that it looks as though the government is concentrating all its efforts on these city farming plots, and yet the national sector remains in the state it's in," said Fedeagro's technical adviser Nelson Calabria.

Private farmers and ranchers also accuse the government of threatening private property with a socialist-inspired agrarian reform law that says idle, uncultivated rural estates can be expropriated and distributed to landless peasants.

But Chavez, a tough-talking nationalist, defends the urban garden plan as a necessary strategy to ward off the threat of food shortages and wean the country from its high dependence on imports.

To the derision of critics, Chavez has also suggested that Caracas slum dwellers whose ramshackle hilltop homes ring the city should raise crops and chickens on their balconies and rooftops. Turn your homes into "vertical henhouses," he said.

The president, who is accused by his foes of ruining the oil-reliant economy with his anti-capitalist rhetoric and interventionist policies, has also vowed to break what he says is a stranglehold on domestic food production held by rich "oligarchs" opposed to him.

During the recent opposition strike, Chavez ordered troops to temporarily seize and search some privately owned food plants which he said were deliberately hoarding supplies.

CUBAN INFLUENCE

Critics say Chavez is using strict foreign exchange and price controls introduced this year to wage a vendetta against his business foes by denying them scarce U.S. dollars and forcing them to lower their prices.

Others ridicule the urban vegetable gardens as little more than a political gimmick and another sign of Chavez's close ideological ties with his friend and ally Cuban President Fidel Castro, whom he regularly salutes as a revolutionary soulmate.

Since Chavez came to power, Venezuela has become Cuba's single biggest trading partner, supplying the island with up to 53,000 barrels per day of oil in a bilateral energy agreement. Several hundred Cuban doctors, sports trainers and technical advisers in areas like sugar farming are working in Venezuela.

Although the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization backs the Venezuelan urban farming project, the main inspiration and training comes from specialists from Cuba.

Venezuelan experts wonder whether the polluted atmosphere of central Caracas could turn the city center vegetables into a health hazard. They say the smog-filled air contains concentrations of carbon monoxide and lead that could contaminate growing plants.

Despite the criticism, Chavez's government and its Cuban advisers are enthusiastic about the project, which involves an initial investment of around $2 million.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Fidel Castro - Cuba

Hugo Chavez - Venezuela

Patterned after Castro's communist neighborhood groups called Defense of the Revolution - Chávez's Bolivarian Circles in South Florida - 17 around U.S. - Spreading around world *** Circle leaders draw strength from what they say is a growing Bolivarian international network. The U.S. circle members will hold their first national assembly in New York in March, and Chávez representatives from Venezuela plan to attend.***

>
President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, center, talks to supporters before a lecture to socialists and communists party members at in the northeastern city of Recife, Brazil,Saturday, April 26, 2003. Chavez is on his last day of visit to Brazil, after he met with Brazil's president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Friday. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)

Rival Protesters Clash at Cuba's Venezuela Embassy*** CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan police fired tear gas to separate opponents and supporters of Cuban President Fidel Castro who clashed on Saturday near the Cuban embassy in Caracas. Around 100 anti-Castro demonstrators and opponents of Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez gathered near the embassy to protest the Cuban government's recent jailing of dozens of political dissidents. Police carrying riot shields kept them a block away from the embassy. National guardsmen shoot tear gas at protesters in Caracas on April 26, 2003. Venezuelan troops and police fired tear gas and shotgun pellets to separate opponents and supporters of Cuban President...***

[Russell Scott]

Global gangster organizations like the UN, which operate either outside or above the law, take your pick, should be forced to leave America, a country based on the rule of law, a soon as it is practical. Leaving the UN in America would be like allowing Saddam to set up his new HQ in New York City. They are massive criminal co-conspirators in the crimes perpetrated on the Iraqi population over the last twelve years. Caracas sounds like the ideal location for their new HQ, in a country who has the same gangster mentality running it.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

And the majority of U.N. delegates would feel very comfortable with Chavez's vision for Venezuela and his role as king-pin of Latin America.

[xm177e2]

Marx might have been against the "rural idiocy" (the idea that everyone should be farmer because a farmer's life is wonderful) but he certainly thought that was where the food would come from to feed his factory workers! These guys are more Marxist than Karl himself! They're insane!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

It's easy to see why Venezuelans are in a panic.

[Wilhelm Tell]

The Marxists are taking Venezuela, which was once a first-world country or close to it, and turning it into a poor third-world country. It is amazing how you can take one of the worlds biggest oil-producing countries, add a little communism, and in a few years, you have one of the worlds biggest poor countries. And we are supposed to celebrate, as if destroying an economy and creating poverty is an achievement. Now everyone is supposed to do subsistence farming in the abandoned yards of broken factories that no longer produce anything. These Marxists are really modern-day feudalists--they want most of the people to be impoverished and exist on subsistence farming, while the rulers live in palaces and travel by jet to conferences around the world where they can meet other feudal lords and discuss how they will exploit the "surplus population."

[LadyDoc]

In WWII we had victory gardens.

I remember as a child that we still were allowed to plant a garden on local public land that was not used (along a gravel road outside a local cemetary).

There are local garden groups in the US that encourages people to plant vegetables and flowers in vacant lots.

This is not a "new" idea.

[LadyDoc]

"...tens of thousands of vehicles belching out polluting gas fumes..."

This is a biased type of writing that should alert people to the writer's ideology.

When I go to Manila, and I see tens of thousands of cars "belching out polluting gas fumes" I remember that poor people don't own cars. Now you can find cars and tvs and cellphones in the local villages. Terrible, terrible.

These people should live in a nice pristine village with no running water, no electricity, no tv, and be forced to walk everywhere.

[texas booster]

Turn your homes into "vertical henhouses," he (Chavez) said.

Yeah, that the ticket. Vertical henhouses.

Now where in the whole world have we seen vertical henhouses before??

Why, in China, amongst the peasants of the land, crammed into slums in the cities of southern China.

I only know this info since doctors mentioned this practice as a probable vector for the SARS virus to jump to humans.

Way to go, Chavez! Kill off all your people, and infect the rest of humanity as well, by copying the Chinese!

Being a Communist means never admitting a mistake. Sheesh.

[Free the USA]

fyi

[NormsRevenge]

And the majority of U.N. delegates would feel very comfortable with Chavez's vision for Venezuela and his role as king-pin of Latin America.

That is a troubling statement, indeed.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I wonder if Chavez has ever been in a chicken coop.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

These Marxists are really modern-day feudalists--they want most of the people to be impoverished and exist on subsistence farming, while the rulers live in palaces and travel by jet to conferences around the world where they can meet other feudal lords and discuss how they will exploit the "surplus population."

STOP! Maxine Waters, Shelia Jackson-Lee and Hillary Rodham Clinton are starting to pant.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

These people should live in a nice pristine village with no running water, no electricity, no tv, and be forced to walk everywhere.

Algore would approve.

[illumini]

I met an (~European country) Ambassador to Venezuela last month in his Caracas residence. His opinion is that the left will support Chaves in the August referendum. My business partners there are CLOSE to senior military commanders. They think otherwise. They think there will be a huge turnout against Chavez in a constitutional election. I like the Venezuelans. My friends are former fighter pilots trained by USAF. One was a General officer in his career. Nice people. Teh Chaves grupo has failed to rebuild infrastructure in poor villiages; but then, ~who's surprised?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

You've described it the way I've been reading it. And that is why Hugo is going to stall, obstruct and eventually deny a referendum, the very vehicle he himself used to assume so much power.

[Tailgunner Joe]

yikes.