Chavez is tightening state control over Venezuela's food supply

[xhausted]

This may be the USA before too long. We may take a different path, but the results will be the same

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/venezuela/4938993/Venezuelas-Hugo-Chavez-tightens-state-control-of-food-amid-rocketing-inflation-and-food-shortages.html

President Hugo Chavez is tightening state control over Venezuela's food supply, setting quotas for food staples which are to be sold at government-imposed prices.

Venezuela's public finances are unravelling, with oil prices at $40 a barrel, while the national budget is calculated at $60 a barrel. Inflation is running at over 30 per cent, yet with the new measures Mr Chavez is seeking to ensure that his core support, the poor, can still fill their shopping baskets with food.

Production quotas and prices have now been set for cooking oil, white rice, sugar, coffee, flour, margarine, pasta, cheeses and tomato sauce.


CARACAS, March 4 (Reuters) - President Hugo Chavez seized a unit of American food giant Cargill on Wednesday and threatened to take over Venezuela's largest private company, renewing a nationalization drive as the OPEC nation's oil income plunges.

Chavez's clash with the food companies, demanding they produce cheaper rice, came less than three weeks after he won a referendum on allowing him to run for reelection and marked his first nationalization in seven months.

"I warn you this revolution means business," said Chavez, whose government has struggled with lower oil income and minor food shortages this year.

http://www.reuters.com/article/AGRLIV

[darwinslair]

well, I dont know about taking over Cargill, but it would not surprise me if the monocrop GMOs go out of vogue. Much of the world is going to be looking to divest themselves from industrial servitude to the GM corporate farmers doing the soy and corn there and get back to actually feeding their own people instead of depending on exporting things to us (oil we cannot afford) for food they would not need if they would just grow it themselves and US debt they would not want in the first place.

But it will not be pretty. Companies as big as the ones there now do not give up without at least trying to start a civil war. Too much money involved and too easy of a target as Chavez.

Glad I dont live there.

Tom

But

[Imp]

I've felt that way about Cargill myself at times....

[hilly7]

There is a guy named Lindsey Williams that pretty much described what would be happening in a film called "The next 12 months". At the time I first watched it, gas was pushing 5.00 per gallon and oil through the roof. Pretty interesting guy.

[Gort]

bump