Venezuela...tightens state control of food amid rocketing inflation/food short..

[opsec]

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

I'm timing this. I want to know how long it will take from this point until we start hearing reports of widespread starvation and canibalism. My posting this in the Food Storage forum was not a coincidence either.

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez tightens state control of food amid rocketing inflation and food shortages

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.
 
By Jeremy McDermott, Latin America Correspondent
Published: 6:33PM GMT 04 Mar 2009

 Hugo Chavez is seeking to ensure that his core support, the poor, can still fill their shopping baskets with food Photo: REUTERS
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.

"If any industry wants to ride roughshod over the consumers, with a view to getting better dividends, we are going to act," said Carlos Osorio, the national superintendent of silos and storage. "For the government, access to food is a matter of national security."

Hugo Chavez to freeze relations with ColombiaProduction quotas and prices have now been set for cooking oil, white rice, sugar, coffee, flour, margarine, pasta, cheeses and tomato sauce.

White rice, the staple for many Venezuelans, can now only be sold at a price of 2.15 bolivares (.07p) per kilo. Private companies insist that production of that kilo costs 4.41 bolivares (.14p) and that government regulations are impossible to fulfil and companies will quickly go broke. Companies that are dedicated to rice production must ensure that 80 per cent of their efforts are dedicated to white rice. The new regulations set production percentages, as companies were rebranding their products to avoid the government controls, like flavouring the rice, as the price restrictions apply only to white rice.

"Forcing companies to produce rice at a loss will not resolve the situation, simply make it worse," said Luis Carmona of Polar, a rice company that has been singled out by the government for trying to sidestep restrictions.

Government price controls on basic goods have been in place, in various forms, since 2003. But the restrictions have forced Venezuela to become increasingly reliant on imports of these products as local farmers will not supply the selected food staples at government prices.

Mr Chavez last month won a referendum allowing him to stand indefinitely for re-election. With that now achieved the Venezuelan leader, who has vowed to turn his South American nation into a model Socialist state, is now taking some unpopular decisions needed to stabilise his floundering economy.

[The Future]

u mean from March 4th 2009 or you actually mean from today?

[opsec]

I'll go with 3/4/09. So about a year and a month and counting.

[darwinslair]

the jump in oil prices will save them then.  they depend on $60 a barrel, and it is about $80 now.  They will be flush again soon.

Tom

[Eddie]

I thought this clip was interesting and kind of close to home. I  tried to find the best place to toss it up so I picked this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8h7dspK77s&feature=channel

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That is interesting. About a decade ago, the nation had about a 30 day surplus of grain. One train car can haul about 250,000 lbs. If this guy is correct and there are thousands of these cars loading up then that works out to millions of tons of grain going someplace other than us. But what's to say this isn't all totally innocent? Somebody owned that grain elevator and had it waiting in the wings for something. Maybe somebody signed a really big contract for grain with a foreign nation. Last year there was a rice shortage, maybe a few foreign nations are stockpiling wheat.

[Eddie]

Exactly, and trains run at night typically when most people are sleeping, except this dude. Makes me wonder.

[Atash Hagmahani]

The raids begin:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/37786852

I would be interested in confirmation. Since Venezuela has been targeted for "regime change", I'd like to hear from a relatively independent Latin American news source.

I just went looking for "Venezuelan news", and got results that were so wildly polarized as to call into question objectivity.

I finally found this, which is not objective, but whose biases can be second-guessed:

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/38973

I would guess the owners of the websites are Australian Left-Trotskyites, sympathetic to other Socialistic movements.

The growing problem of food shortages in Venezuela has become a real point of discussion. Go to any supermarket or small shop and people are talking about it, complaining that they can't buy what they need and sharing anecdotes about how expensive products have become.

Rising discontent over food shortages has become a major challenge for the government of Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez. More than a few analysts have pointed to the issue as one of the factors behind the defeat of Chavez's proposed constitutional reforms — that aimed to strengthen popular power and help open the transition to socialism — in the December 2 referendum.

It has also exposed a number of problems that the Bolivarian revolution — as the process of change led by Chavez that aims to overcome underdevelopment and poverty is known — has been unable to overcome. Solutions to such problems are crucial to the survival of the process.

So, apparently, there ARE food shortages. The Socialist Left agrees on that point. They come up with different conclusions as to what causes them, which I'll ignore for just a moment, since they actually address the cause that the rest of us somewhat assume (rare for far-Lefties):

The removal of the controls has been welcomed by capitalists and private media, who have blamed them from the beginning for causing the shortages. The argument presented is that since producers were being forced to sell their products at lower than market prices, production would drop automatically as there was no incentive to continue it at either existing levels or increase it.

This argument is true in a capitalist economy, where the sole purpose of production is to generate the greatest possible profit for the private owners of the means of production. If a capitalist can produce something else that makes them more money they will, regardless of the social consequences.

Capitalist sabotage

However, the process of change in Venezuela has increasingly aimed at moving away from organising the economy along those lines.

Emphasis mine. They believe that they can just COMMAND production and demand to fall within viable parameters.

[opsec]

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_12/b4171046603604.htm

If you don't have food storage,get started.

Good catch by Hancocs.

"I am so fed up with these food shortages," Fernández mutters as he sweeps up the mess. "People get desperate and start behaving like animals."

Buddy, you ain't seen nothin' yet...

It is not commonly mentioned in history books, but you hear stories of starvation in places like China and Russia and tales of people eating their own babies. People, that is not fiction. That happened. It does happen. It will happen again.