Hugo Chavez orders seizure of British company's land for Venezuelan state

[alp227]

Source: AP

Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, 'has ordered the confiscation of 717,000 acres from a British company amid a disagreement over compensation for earlier seizures of ranchland from the firm.

Chavez announced the latest takeover after saying that Venezuela refuses to pay compensation in foreign currency to Agropecuaria Flora, a local subsidiary of Britain's Vestey Group.

Chavez said the company had demanded the government pay it in dollars for the previous expropriation of tens of thousands of acres. But the government insists in paying in bolivars, Venezuela's currency.

It is difficult for foreign companies operating in Venezuela to repatriate profits and other income in bolivars because of foreign currency controls in the South American country. Representatives of Agropecuaria Flora did not answer calls seeking comment.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/30/hugo-chavez-orders-land-seizure

[Marazinia]

1. Good

I've long thought Chavez talked the talk without walking the walk as often as he should. Every time he boots international corporations from Venezuela for the sake of Venezuela's citizens, I'm happy.

[TBMASE]

2. How does this make life better for his citizens?

[Marazinia]

3. Because the goods and profit made from that land now get to stay in Venezuela

The US should look into these concepts sometime.

[banned from Kos]

4. there is good and bad to this move -- the bad is that no outside investor

should ever invest a dime in Venezuela again.

Now if they can be completely self-sufficient that may not be so bad.

[Marazinia]

12. They'll be fine

They've got oil. The worry of course is always that the US will topple any government that refuses to allow its resources to be plundered by outside interests.

[teddy51]

15. I suspect that the US has been trying to topple Chavez for some time now, but

have so far failed. There are things that I don't like about Chavez, but doing good for his people is not one of those.

[No Elephants]

43. He's done some good for our people ,too. The ONLY oil company that

contributes oil to Joe Kennedy's charity that helps Americans heat their homes in winter.

With cuts to fuel subidies for poor people recommended by the Obama budget this should come in handier than it may have in the past. So I hope they're doing it this year as well.

Joe Kennedy claims they asked every oil company to donate and Venezuela was the only one that said yes. A few years running now, too.

[TBMASE]

16. But they're importing food

They were able to produce their own food before moves like this were made. Now they're importing food from neighboring countries because they can't produce enough for their own population

[Marazinia]

17. Maybe now that will change

And even if it doesn't, at least they have something to bargain with. More than the heavily indebted USA can say. What do we export? Movies and technology. Oh yeah, and terrorism. But not much in the way of tangible goods and getting less every year.

[Zorro]

19. Actually the US exports a lot of products

Here's a source of import/export statistics.

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/current_press_release/ft900.pdf

[Marazinia]

29. Not in comparison to what we import

Although I did forget that the US exports food to several countries. Unfortunately, this often ends up hurting the local farmers of those countries. It doesn't make sense to me for a wealthy nation to import products that are in direct competition with the products that country can and does produce for itself. Now, if a country needs more on top of what it produces, that makes sense, but otherwise, it's just cold blooded.

[No Elephants]

44. No, they were not producing their own food before. Vestey was producing it.

NOW, they can produce their own food.

[tama]

57. Incorrect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Venezuela:
"Agriculture in Venezuela has a much smaller share of the economy than in any other Latin American country. From the discovery of oil in Venezuela in the early twentieth century to the 1940s, the importance of agriculture declined rapidly, and with the beginning of large-scale industrial development in the 1940s, agriculture and land reform was largely neglected by successive governments (although a 1960 land reform law did see 200,000 families receive land, largely in the early 1960s). The country imports most of its food, mainly from Colombia and the United States.<1> Since 1999, under the Bolivarian Revolution of President Hugo Chávez, agriculture has had a somewhat higher priority."

...

Venezuela's present-day agriculture is characterized by inefficiency and low investment, with 70 percent of agricultural land owned by 3 percent of agricultural proprietors (one of the highest levels of land concentration in Latin America). According to the Land and Agricultural Reform Law of 2001 (see Mission Zamora), public and private land deemed to be illegally held or unproductive is to be redistributed.<1> From 1999 to 2006, 130 landless workers were assassinated by sicarios paid by opponents to the reform.<5> As of January 2009, the Venezuelan government had redistributed nearly 2.7 million hectares of idle land (6.6 million acres—nearly 1/3 of the latifundio land existing prior to 1998) to 180,000 landless peasant families.<6>

A new Bolivarian Mission, Mission Vuelta al Campo was announced in 2005; it seeks to encourage impoverished and unemployed urban Venezuelans to willingly return to the countryside. This has involved using land recovered from private owners where ownership could not be demonstrated, as well as nationalisation. For example in 2008 the government expropriated El Frio, a 63,000 hectare estate in Apure (larger than the tourist island of Isla Margarita), as its owners (reputed to include Nelson Rockefeller) could not demonstrate legal land title.<7> The Venezuelan government has also employed foreign expertise to develop Venezuela's agricultural potential, for example by working with Vietnamese agronomists to develop planting techniques and rice seed hybrids appropriate to Venezuelan agricultural conditions.<8> The land reform program has nevertheless been the subject of criticism from a variety of sources, with farmers said to be lacking sufficient government support,<9> particularly in the case of urban residents moving to the countryside to develop farming cooperatives.

By 2008, Venezuela was self-sufficient in its two most important grains, corn and rice, with production increases of 132% for corn and between 71-94% for rice since 1998. The country also achieved self-sufficiency in pork, representing an increase in production of nearly 77% since 1998. Venezuela is also on its way to reaching self-sufficiency in a number of other important staple foods, including beef, chicken, and eggs, for which domestic production currently meets 70%, 85%, and 80% of national demand, respectively. Milk production has increased by 900% to 1.96 million tons, fulfilling 55 percent of national demand. Many other crops have seen significant increases over the past decade, including black beans (143%), root vegetables (115%), and sunflowers for cooking oil production (125 percent).<6><10>

In 2010 the government announced that there had been a 48% increase in lands under cultivation since 1998. Over the same periods, production of some staples had increased substantially: "Rice production has risen by 84%, reaching nearly 1.3 million tons yearly while milk production has risen to 2.18 million tons, a 47% increase."<11>

After the 2010 parliamentary elections, the Venezuelan government stepped up efforts to restructure the agricultural sector, nationalising the country's largest agricultural supply company (renaming it Agropatria) and fertilizer company (FertiNitro).

[hack89]

82. They also have 27 percent inflation and an unbalanced economy

that lives and dies by oil prices.

If the US wanted to destroy Chavez all they would need to do is conspire with Saudi Arabia to lower the price of oil. It would ruin their economy. The people would do the toppling themselves.

[Fool Count]

8. Not only is that good for Venezuelans, but also for ordinary British people.

The profits that UK conglomerate wouldn't make won't go to the UK's 1% and won't be used to subvert democracy
in their country.

[TBMASE]

14. Moves like this have led to them importing food....how does this change that?

if you're going to start seizing private property in the name of the state and the state is already having problems producing food, domestically, how does it benefit the people to keep doing it?

[Marazinia]

18. Well...

If the Irish had managed to stop the exportation of food during crop failures, there never would have been a potato famine. Where did that food go? To countries that had plenty already. You don't let your needed resources leave your country. Ever. Oil isn't a crop, but without it modern agriculture is impossible.

[Fool Count]

23. How? By continuing to do whatever the British owners are doing

but keeping profits for the Venezuelan people instead of sending them to the 1%-ers in UK, that's how.
It's not like those corporate owners are contributing some awesome British agricultural know-how or
tilling the land themselves. It's the local Venezuelan workers who do all the work anyhow.

[DeSwiss]

25. How much food do the British import? (Rhetorical) n/t

[No Elephants]

The same land and climate that produced food for Vestey to profit from is still there.

It can do for Argentinians what it did for Vestey. Maybe more and healthier, too.

[tama]

58. Get a clue

From wikipedia:
"By 2008, Venezuela was self-sufficient in its two most important grains, corn and rice, with production increases of 132% for corn and between 71-94% for rice since 1998. The country also achieved self-sufficiency in pork, representing an increase in production of nearly 77% since 1998. Venezuela is also on its way to reaching self-sufficiency in a number of other important staple foods, including beef, chicken, and eggs, for which domestic production currently meets 70%, 85%, and 80% of national demand, respectively. Milk production has increased by 900% to 1.96 million tons, fulfilling 55 percent of national demand. Many other crops have seen significant increases over the past decade, including black beans (143%), root vegetables (115%), and sunflowers for cooking oil production (125 percent)."

Before the rich land owners have been keeping the land unproductive because capitalistic ownership is just idiotic control mania.

[Exultant Democracy]

63. You switch from growing cash crops to staples, very simple. Lot more food gown with less energy

on the same land with less environmental damage. If third world countries want food security they need to nationalize the foreign owned farm land that inevitably leads to a net loss for the host country.

[EFerrari]

65. No, that's wrong. Decades of bad government led to their ag system

tanking in the 80s. "Moves like this" have nothing to do with it.

[SKKY]

80. You mean stay within the Chavez family.

[EFerrari]

37. Because it encourages foreign investors to keep their money

in Venezuela.

[No Elephants]

46. Or to cease investing money in Venezuela?

[EFerrari]

66. Venezuela is not hurting for investors.

[hack89]

83. When your monetary policy is centered on restricting capital flight

you have a problem. As seen by their ballooning foreign debt. 92% of export revenue comes from oil - they are importing things they previously made or grew. So where is all of this foreign investment going? If their capital flows are adequate, why is their debt growing exponentially?

[tama]

59. No respect

for the parasitical class of "foreign investors". You can't eat money, so fuck money and interest. People who cultivate and belong to the land and can feed themselves and their families don't need money from foreign investors. The parasite class needs people who work and produce, not vice versa.

[teddy51]

5. I agree with you totally... And yep, the US should take a chapter from this, but they won't. n/t

[CJvR]

7. Really?

So what foreign owned things in the US do you want to grab?

[teddy51]

9. Any and all corporations that send our jobs over seas and pay no tax in the US.

The US is being raped by these companies and we are letting it happen. Of course one problem is neither our Congress or White House would ever take on a role like Hugo Chavez has because they are all bought and paid for by these Corps.

[formercia]

10. Let's start with Saudi Arabia for their support of Terrorism

How's that?

[CrackersMcGee]

32. If you don't mind 15 dollars a gallon, it's fine and dandy.

Etc Etc Etc. Oil is the source of endless terror and war in the middle east.
And the way our cities are set up, I don't see that changing in the next 50 years.

[No Elephants]

49. Maybe with greener cars and more jobs, higher gasoline prices would be easier to handle.

Too bad St. Ronnie undid or perverted everything that Carter tried to do and recommend to make us more energy independent, down to pointlessly removing solar panels from the roof of the White House.

Lord, I dislike that man. And his admirers in both Parties.

[Marazinia]

13. Let's start here

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/26/us-usa-bp-permit-idUSTRE79P6LU20111026

Why is British Petroleum involved in drilling on US territory? They've operated in both Alaska and in the Gulf for a long time. To what purpose? Why should foreign companies and investors have any role in US domestic oil production, even if they do partner with US companies to do it?

[Spider Jerusalem]

39. Why are Chevron and ExxonMobil drilling in Nigeria? And Canada? And Russia?

[harrose]

21. How about....

...faux news?

[No Elephants]

48. The U.S. Commerce Department should have a list of all things in the U.S. that are under

foreign control, along with information about each entity.

When we have that information, maybe your question would be more appropriate?

[CJvR]

6. The cleptocracy...

...cleptos on.

[Cieran_WI]

11. Ha, I like that so much, I'm gonna steal it. n/t

[EFerrari]

34. Lmao. How dare Venezuela demand payment for its own territory in its own currency.

The fucking nerve of those people.

[CJvR]

55. Venezuela's...

...currency problems are entirely home made (or rather Chavez made) and an entirely logical result of the Chavez goverment's own policies.

[EFerrari]

68. Problems? You were talking about stealing.

[unkachuck]

20. "...Venezuela refuses to pay compensation in foreign currency..."

....sounds reasonable to me....

....if a Venezuelan company wanted compensation for property in Britain they could hardly expected to be paid in bolivars instead of pounds....

"It is difficult for foreign companies operating in Venezuela to repatriate profits..."

....Venezuela for Venezuelans....if you don't like or don't want to play by the rules and laws of Venezuela, don't go there....

[teddy51]

22. Excellent points! When in Rome, do like the Romans. n/t

[Little Tich]

24. The Bolivars are useless. No wonder Agropecuaria Flora wants real money.

Besides, the many expropriations are economic madness. These ranches are very productive and generate hard currency and jobs for Venezuela. Why break them up and use them for subsistence farming? It doesn't make sense to me.

[teddy51]

27. Bullshit! What Chavez is saying is, I run this country not you the Corporations that take

the profits out of Venezuela and my people will never see that money again. Sorry, but that is a fail and other countries should take a page from this.

[Marazinia]

28. Long story short

The more resources and profit that remain in a country at any level of society rather than going out of it to foreign businesses and investors, the faster a country can reduce inequality. Venezuela is still a poor country. It has a growing middle class and an infrastructure that is certainly better than it was in most respects, but it's not a country that needs to shrug and invite profiteers in to walk off with its resources and profit. It's economy needs money coming in as much as possible, not going out.

[Little Tich]

30. How can scaring away investors be a good thing?

These ranches will now be dismantled and the land largely abandoned. This will lead to even more food shortages in a country that should be able to feed itself, but can't because of mismanagement of resources.

[EFerrari]

35. Venezuela is fine for investors. Vultures, not so much.

[Little Tich]

40. Venezuela is not good for investors of any kind...

Venezuela ranked 175 (out of 183 countries) according to the World Bank's "Ease of doing business" ranking for 2011:
http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/venezuela/

US Department of State has a lenghty 2011 Investment Climate Statement for Venezuela:
http://www.state.gov/e/eeb/rls/othr/ics/2011/157383.htm

AP: Venezuela faces growing load of arbitration cases
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gqYG7Ysa6WpfXa3owovWm0WKt8fA?docId=29c5c4ccde814743a1dce7d8311ccd94
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I also seem to remember that Venezuela is the weakest economy in Latin America, the one with the highest inflation etc...

[tama]

61. You are speaking of vultures,

not investors. The landless people who are now being given land and cultivate it invest in increasing the fertility of land in sustainable way, invest in building strong egalitarian communities, invest in being able to feed the people, invest in better lives for themselves and their children.

The parasitical vultures "invest" only in robbing the fruits of labor and gifts of nature.

[EFerrari]

67. The BRIC countries all invest in Venezuela. You are misinformed.

[No Elephants]

50. No reason the land still cannot be farmed.

[Marazinia]

74. Why abandon the land?

Why not continue to operate it? Exxon Mobile got kicked out and the oil still kept flowing, didn't it?

[msanthrope]

36. The Great Leap Forward.....killed millions. nt

[Faithful One]

45. What will happen is what happens every time.

These businesses will be "appropriated" to "true Venezuelans" who happen to share the dictator's last name, and they will proceed to run them into the ground. What results will be a mysterious loss in millions of these corporation's money that "mysteriously" ends up in Swiss bank accounts tied to the dicta- "president".

[go west young man]

52. From Wikipedia.

According to official sources from the United Nations, the percentage of people below the national poverty line has decreased during the presidency of Hugo Chávez, from 48.1% in 2002 to 28% in 2008.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Venezuela


He must have a lot of family members!:shrug:

[EFerrari]

69. Which is a big round pantload.

The Chavez government has vastly reduced poverty in Venezuela and extreme poverty even more. Its been praised for these efforts by the UN. Maybe you're talking about some freeper Venezuela in an alternate Universe.

[CJvR]

53. You might...

...almost as well accept monopoly money.

[ieoeja]

56. Currently trading at 4.30 VEF to 1.00 USD in the market place. That is some pretty nice ...

... monopoly money!

On last Friday...

4.2893 VEF = 1 USD according to gov't mandated currency conversion rate
4.3000 VEF = 1 USD according to the open markets

[Little Tich]

79. What market place is that?

Apparently Bolivares are as popular as an infestation of lice. Once you have them, they are not easy to get rid of. I googled "where can I exchange bolivares?" and this is one of the sites that showed up:

Caracas Forum: Where can I exchange Bolivares Fuertes to Dollars in the US?
http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g316066-i3370-k2016334-Where_can_I_exchange_Bolivares_Fuertes_to_Dollars_in_the_US-Caracas_Central_Venezuela.html

[tama]

60. You are totally incorrect

From wikipedia:
"Venezuela's present-day agriculture is characterized by inefficiency and low investment, with 70 percent of agricultural land owned by 3 percent of agricultural proprietors (one of the highest levels of land concentration in Latin America). According to the Land and Agricultural Reform Law of 2001 (see Mission Zamora), public and private land deemed to be illegally held or unproductive is to be redistributed.<1> From 1999 to 2006, 130 landless workers were assassinated by sicarios paid by opponents to the reform.<5> As of January 2009, the Venezuelan government had redistributed nearly 2.7 million hectares of idle land (6.6 million acres—nearly 1/3 of the latifundio land existing prior to 1998) to 180,000 landless peasant families.<6>

...

By 2008, Venezuela was self-sufficient in its two most important grains, corn and rice, with production increases of 132% for corn and between 71-94% for rice since 1998. The country also achieved self-sufficiency in pork, representing an increase in production of nearly 77% since 1998. Venezuela is also on its way to reaching self-sufficiency in a number of other important staple foods, including beef, chicken, and eggs, for which domestic production currently meets 70%, 85%, and 80% of national demand, respectively. Milk production has increased by 900% to 1.96 million tons, fulfilling 55 percent of national demand. Many other crops have seen significant increases over the past decade, including black beans (143%), root vegetables (115%), and sunflowers for cooking oil production (125 percent)."

The last thing that the unproductive parasitical class that "makes money work" instead of working themselves is independent farmers who don't need the "services" of the parasite class and can tell them to fuck of and grow their own food.

[Little Tich]

78. Nevertheless, the Per Capita food production has decreased slightly over the years.

In short Venezuela is barely keeping up with population growth. I didn't really believe that the Venezuelan agriculture was in such a sorry state, but it is. Check for your self, and play with the numbers all you want at the United Nations faostat site:

http://faostat.fao.org/site/612/DesktopDefault.aspx?PageID=612#ancor

[Exultant Democracy]

64. They operate as a net loss for Venezuela, they would be better off growing staple crops on the land

[DeSwiss]

26. Great! - K&R n/t

[CrackersMcGee]

31. So, if you question Chavez, you automagically get extra punishment? Hmm, not sure about that...

Anyways, aren't there more pressing matters for Comandante el Jefe Hugo Chávez Frías?
What's the crime rate in Caracas lately?

[Faithful One]

47. Contrary to the Chavez talking heads, one of the highest in Latin America. n/t

[CrackersMcGee]

85. World's highest murder rate. nt.

[pipoman]

33. Shocker..

[madokie]

38. I'd run the British off it I was him

What the fuck does a British company have in owning 717,000 acres of Venezuelan land anyway.

[Spider Jerusalem]

41. Same business that American companies or citizens have in owning thousands of acres...

all over Latin and South America I suppose? Especially American/multinational corporations engaged in mining and other resource extraction.

[madokie]

51. Yup and I say the same about them too

The people who live on or in the lands should be the owners not some corporation from some other country

OT: HST was/is one of my favorite reads. Fear and loathing in Las Vegas is the funniest thing I've ever read I do believe. Its hard to wrap my head around him taking his own life.

[expatriate2mex]

76. Might as well take it everywhere then, take all land and property from

mexican nationals in the us, right?nt

[octothorpe]

62. Same reason why Citgo owns land/buildings in the US...

[dipsydoodle]

42. Good

K & R

[bitchkitty]

54. Wonderful news!

Not only for the people of Venezuela, but for me! It's very entertaining to watch all the heads spin around. Thank you for posting this.

[On the Road]

70. I Have Defended Chavez on a Number of Occasions

but confiscations and a general lack of respect for property rights is not good at all.

[EFerrari]

71. Expropriation is not confiscation. And it's perfectly legal. nt

[On the Road]

72. Well, Regardless of Whether It's Legal in Venezuela

confiscation without compensation is very, very bad for a society. It is countermanded by the US Bill of Rights and should be illegal everywhere. Nobody is going to invest in a country where the investment is subject to being seized at any time. Without investment, all Venezuela has is the oil until it starts to run out.

Up to this point, Chavez has been a somewhat better option that a right-wing hack like Carmona. But if this kind decision becomes routine, the country might even better off with a more typical banana-republic-style government.

[Harmony Blue]

73. Compensation was offered

they blinked and lost out.

Yes Bolivares is not like the British Pound, but it is some compensation.

[CJvR]

81. Well...

...it might make nice TP.

[CrackersMcGee]

84. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has ordered the immediate nationalisation of Agroflora. nt

[Marazinia]

75. No one ever respected the rights of the indigenous

Indigenous people in Latin American in particular are still murdered or driven off their land for the sake of foreign investment. If anything, one of my complaints against Chavez is that he could do more to protect their rights. Venezuela has a tiny privileged class that to this day owns a massive amount of Venezuela's wealth. They have their fingers in land, in oil, in food production, in everything. They didn't come by their properties honestly for the most part, nor did the foreign investors who partnered with them. The history of Latin America is a history of theft and murder. These confiscations don't stand in isolation. They are corrective measures for past crimes, many committed in the lifetimes of those involved.

[Matilda]

77. It's hard to sympathise with the Vesteys.

They have a long history of pursuing wealth and also avoiding paying tax on it. They've done it in Britain, in Australia, and in South America. Not just tax minimisation, but any dodgy scheme they could come up with. Just Google "Vestey Family+Tax Avoidance".

It's time they gave something back.