This is part of the ideas for Venezuela.
The country is right now a big importer of most of its food. This has to do, among other things, with an extremely overvalued currency, high salaries for extremely low productivity, insecurity for investors as the government confiscates the lands of its enemies (not of its rich Boliburgueses), the food imports the government distributes for very low prices "to fight inflation" and the price controls in general. There are other factors, of course.
Here I will be presenting some ideas about how to improve things once this regime is gone. I will be constantly updating this and the other posts on Ideas for Venezuela. As I have nothing to do with agriculture (well, my grandparents were poor farmers and my dad was one as a young boy), I count on the help of others. So: if you have an idea, share it!
The country is right now a big importer of most of its food. This has to do, among other things, with an extremely overvalued currency, high salaries for extremely low productivity, insecurity for investors as the government confiscates the lands of its enemies (not of its rich Boliburgueses), the food imports the government distributes for very low prices "to fight inflation" and the price controls in general. There are other factors, of course.
Here I will be presenting some ideas about how to improve things once this regime is gone. I will be constantly updating this and the other posts on Ideas for Venezuela. As I have nothing to do with agriculture (well, my grandparents were poor farmers and my dad was one as a young boy), I count on the help of others. So: if you have an idea, share it!
- Start a comprehensive registration of all land properties in every municipality of Venezuela and make the available information online: you - I mean every Venezuelan - go to a site, you choose the municipality and you get the information about who owns or claims ownership of what land larger than 2 hectares. I will be expanding this topic very soon. The BoliburguesÃa and the Ancien Regime won't like this. Norwegians do that and many others as well. Here you can see (in Norwegian, sorry) the site of the Norwegian Mapping Authority, a governmental organization responsible not just for mapping but for the record of who owns the land. The Venezuelan government should make every municipality responsible to count who owns (or initially who claims to own) what in Venezuela. The technology is available. A lot of people are going to oppose this but we need transparency if we are ever going to stop being an underdeveloped country. Right now if you want to investigate property rights in Venezuela, you have to go to local registries where everything is in paper...in boxes, in folders, in absolute chaos or nowhere...and you have to beg or pay your local authorities to give you a glimpse on that.
Who owns what land of the 769km2 that make Alberto Arvelo Torrealba municipality (the place where Hugo comes from)? Let's register it, let's everyone check...there and in every other municipality.
- Tax legal landowners accordingly, but give them security they won't be invaded.
- Define what areas in densely populated regions should be reserved for agricultural purposes: This is actually already in Venezuela's law but nobody pays attention to it. Most of the best lands for agriculture are located among the largest cities and urban agglomerations. In Carabobo, for instance, lands south of Valencia are being used for building shanty towns, for big haciendas (specially for the boliburguesÃa now)...in most other municipalities the areas that once produced a lot of food for the region are now just more and more urbanizations.
- Make phosphate deposits available to improve possible farmland: Venezuela has the potential to be a great agricultural country, but at present much of the otherwise suitable farmland is missing important elements, mostly phosphate. The Llanos are a good example of this, very deficient in phosphate and hence not good grazing lands or croplands. Bring the phosphate to the Llanos! (Big thanks to Astera, this is his idea and most of his words)
Get that phosphate to the right spot and you will get more than a dime's worth!
- Keep an eye on possible pollution sources from those phosphates and other agricultural products: if we want agriculture to be sustainable and do not affect our delicate environment, we need open controls that everyone can verify about phosphate levels in rivers (Orinoco, etc) and otherwise.
We don't want the Orinoco to be polluted as the Potomac or as anything else.
