From Agribusiness to Agroecology? An Analysis of Venezuela’s Nationalization of AgroIsleñaOn Sunday, October 3rd (2010) ,
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez made public another remarkable opportunity for agroecology and food sovereignty advocates worldwide as he announced the effective nationalization of AgroIsleña, the transnational agribusiness firm that was – before Chavez signed Decree Number 7.700 – Venezuela’s main distributor of agrochemical inputs. Now under state control, the company has been re-named AgroPatria, meaning “AgroHomeland.”(SNIP)
While in the United States and Europe the only recent government interventions in the economy are what István Mészáros calls “the nationalization of capitalist bankruptcy” (in reference to government bailouts after financial capital’s recent collapse),<6> in Venezuela the state is playing an increasingly active role in the restructuring of the economy for the benefit of the Venezuelan people. And unlike the U.S. and Europe, Venezuela has no intention of returning these firms back to private interests – neither in the short or long term.
“AgroIsleña would have the products but they wouldn’t sell them to us,” said Toribia Sequera de Molina, a sugarcane producer in the state of Lara. “We would arrive at the warehouses with the resources to buy 20 sacks of fertilizers, but they wouldn’t sell them to us. Meanwhile, they would set aside one or two thousand sacks for their own re-distributors,”<7> de Molina affirmed as he described one of AgroIsleña’s many unjust business practices.
In a written statement published October 10 entitled, “AgroPatria!”, Chávez laid out the social, economic, and environmental justification for his decision to nationalize the firm. Chávez stated:
“Nothing is above the sacred interests of the homeland. I am reminded of the words of Martí who in 1873 declared, ‘The homeland is community of interests, unity of traditions, unity of ends, the sweet fusion of loves and hopes’. And we want, and we are determined, to live by those words... On a number of occasions we warned them of the need to respect production plans organized by the national government, but these warnings went without reply. We have expropriated based on the national interest. The nationalization of AgroIsleña is going to contribute not only to reducing the price of food to consumers, and as a result reduce inflation, but it will also serve as an ecological shield for our soils.”<8>
President Chávez went on to discuss comments made by Venezuelan agroecologist Miguel Ángel Nuñez, reaffirming the agroecologist’s position that, “AgroIsleña has numerous social, labor and environmental debts (with society). In fact, in reality, by nationalizing the firm we are beginning to cancel a historic debt with the Venezuelan countryside.” Chávez insisted that the decision to act was made “to make sure, at all costs, that AgroIsleña would not keep using extortion against our campesinos – with their high prices and exaggerated interests on loans and credits, not to mention the imposition of an agrotoxic package and transnational ecocide that deteriorates our soils with products that provoke long-term damage to the environment.”(MORE)
(my emphasis)
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5723------------------------------------------
I just caught up with this article, at the very informative venezuelanalysis.com web site, and I'm quite interested in the environmental aspects of this nationalization, and also the help that nationalization will bring to campesinos and farm workers. We really, really, REALLY need to stop using pesticides and to help small farmers--the best food producers, and the producers of the best food.
I was also interested in the comparison between the U.S. and Venezuela--with U.S. leaders bending themselves into pretzels to please the rich and the corporate, and the Venezuelan government putting the people and the environment first.
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