Talk:Economic policy of the Hugo Chávez administration

Reliable sources should always take precedence over unreliable sources.

The BBC, Accosicated Press, the Washington Post, and Business Week are much more reliable than a bunch of opinion columns from low circulation publications that have an agenda to push.

I added this to the "Agriculture and land reform" section, but someone else took it out.

A January 10, 2006 BBC article reported that since 2003, Chavez has been setting strict price controls on food, and that these price controls have caused shortages and hoarding.

A January 22, 2008 Associated Press article reported that Chavez had ordered the military to seize 750 tons of food that sellers were illegally trying to smuggle across the border to sell for higher prices than what was legal in Venezuela, and that Chavez had also threatened to seize the property of farmers who sold food at prices that exceeded the government's price controls.

On February 28, 2009 Chavez ordered the military to temporarily seize control of all the rice processing plants in the country and force them to produce at full capacity, which he claimed they had been avoiding in response to the price caps.

On March 4, 2009, the BBC reported that Chavez had set minimum production quotas for 12 basic foods that were subject to price controls, including white rice, cooking oil, coffee, sugar, powdered milk, cheese, and tomato sauce. Business leaders and food producers claimed that the government was forcing them to produce this food at a loss.

A June 20, 2009 article in the Washington Post reported on Chávez's policy of redistributing farmland. Chávez has seized many large farms from their owners. Although Chávez allows small farmers to work the land, he did not give them title to the land, and they are often required to work as part of a collective. Chávez said of the farmland, "The land is not private. It is the property of the state." Because of this collectivization, the income that a farmer receives does not correspond to the amount of work that he does. Some of the farmland that had been productive while under private ownership is now idle under collective ownership, and some of the farm equipment sits gathering dust. As a result, food production has fallen substantially. Nearly five years after the start of the land redistribution program, the country is now more dependent on food imports than ever before. Production of primary foods such as beef, rice, sugar cane, and milk have fallen. Carlos Machado, an agriculture expert at the Institute of Higher Administrative Studies in Caracas, stated, "If there is a word to describe all this, it is 'stagnant'... The government policy to increase the crop production in the country is a complete failure." Felicia Escobar, a lawyer and consultant on land issues who used to work for the Agriculture Ministry, said of this farm collectivization, "That is socialism... It did not work before, and it does not work now." One farmer, referring to the government officials overseeing the land redistribution, stated, "These people know nothing about agriculture."

Chávez has seized many supermarkets from their owners. Under government ownership, the shelves in these supermarkets are often empty.

Physalia physalis (talk) 17:24, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Anyway, without this information, the article only mentions the intentions of Chavez's food and agriculture programs, but does not mention the actual results. The article should mention both the intentions and the results. Physalia physalis (talk) 17:30, 10 August 2010 (UTC)