Venezuela Uses Recovered Land to Plant Rice with Vietnamese AssistanceVenezuela Uses Recovered Land to Plant Rice with Vietnamese Assistance

Venezuela Uses Recovered Land to Plant Rice with Vietnamese Assistance

May 15th 2009, by Tamara Pearson – Venezuelanalysis.com

Mérida, May 15th 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) - As part of Venezuela's food sovereignty and security plan, and as a result of an agreement with Vietnam, Venezuela has increased its rice cultivation by farming land that was previously privately owned and unused.

On Wednesday, the newly created "socialist company" Marisela started planting rice on 26 hectares (64.2 acres) of land that the government recovered from a large private estate in Apure state.

The Venezuelan government has worked with a team of Vietnamese agronomists to develop planting techniques and create rice seed hybrids appropriate to Venezuelan agricultural conditions, and also to develop an agro-ecological project involving fish cultivation in the secondary irrigation canals of the rice paddies.

The rice seeds are plague-resistant and will be sold at up to 50% cheaper than other seeds. This is part of Venezuela's National Seed Plan, which aims to strengthen national food production, sovereignty and security, and to develop local seed banks and new farming technology.

Agriculture and Land Minister Elias Jaua denounced the existence of a campaign by private businesses against Venezuelan seeds. He said this campaign exists "because we are preventing their speculation."

Jaua also said the rice will be free of agro-chemicals, and the government expects to harvest five tons per hectare in September. Within four years, the government hopes to be cultivating rice on 50,000 hectares (123,500 acres) of recovered land, said Jaua.

"For the first time rice is being planted on this land for the Venezuelan people. It has been a struggle for the farmers to recover this land and to put it to the service of national food production... we're not just liberating land, but also men and women," Jaua said.

Yvan Gil, the vice president for agricultural products in the Agriculture and Land Ministry, said on the state television station VTV that increasing rice production would help create new consumption habits and could substitute wheat, which can't be produced in Venezuela. Rice, however, is a "natural market for Venezuela and the rice that isn't consumed can be exported," he said.

Gil said that for years the previous land owners had clamed the land was unproductive and only suitable for use as pasture or for agro-tourism. However the team from Vietnam studied the land and said it had the right characteristics for rice cultivation.

President Hugo Chavez, on seeing footage of tractors ploughing the new rice fields said that the tractors looked like tanks, and that the scene looked like a war. "This is the war for life," he said.

In other agricultural initiatives, Chavez announced the development of a publicly owned shrimp farm in Falcon state on Wednesday. On Thursday, 1,700 tons of soy seeds arrived in Anzoategui state from Brazil, as part of the National Seed Plan.