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Venezuela: Co-operatives Turn Idle Landed Estates Green
By Humberto Márquez
Inter-Press Service
June 14, 2008

Continued

Every day, the co-operative donates 20 litres of milk to the two small schools nearby. "We provide the cup of milk that each child needs," says Méndez proudly.

"But if in addition to communally owned animals one of us has a cow or a horse, or gets a pig, it can be raised with the others and sold by the individual owner. Some portion will be given to the co-operative, but we don't oppose that sort of ownership. What we do want is the land and other life-sustaining projects," says Coirán.

The income "is used for the expenses that are also shared, for production or for food, and each member receives an additional 400 bolívares (186 dollars) per month as an advance of what would be due for their role in managing the co-operative at the end of the year," explains Iraima Benaventa, a young mother of two who is in charge of logistics.

Benaventa, who is taking part in a secondary-level distance learning programme, records the purchases that another member has brought from the city -- pasta, rice, cattle vaccines -- and supervises the younger members in clean-up and kitchen activities. The meal today is rice and beef.

Brisas del Masparro will begin construction this year of housing units for 56 families, with a self-construction plan backed by the government. "We will build them together in the style of a little town in order to facilitate and reduce costs of services like water, electricity and gas, with a sports field, a town square and a community centre, and perhaps even a pool," says one member.

BETTER COMMUNITY

Las Piedras, one corner of the Masparro co-operative, is an hour's drive from Barinas, the regional capital, passing by Sabaneta, President Chávez's birthplace. Then comes another hour of driving over open land and gravel that the co-operative members are requesting to be paved in benefit of the entire community.

"The farms in this sector were very unproductive five years ago. But with our efforts, the government programmes arrived. The road was opened up, a land plan was begun, possession papers were given to individual farmers or co-operativists, and credits were granted," says Coirán.

In Las Piedras "we went from nearly zero to 21,000 litres of milk per day (national output is 1.3 to 1.7 million litres daily, according to different sources). Now there are people raising more cattle, planting maize, fruit trees and pastures," says the co-op president.

Caracciolo Ramírez, an independent farmer, has around 40 hectares near the co-operative's land.

"The government has helped with agrarian charters, with some financing, and with the road. I will do some home improvements, my oldest daughter began university -- I am seeing the results," says Ramírez, offering this reporter a cool oat drink with ice under the porch roof at his brick home.

Meanwhile, the co-operative is preparing a larger area than last year to plant maize, building a new cow barn and refurbishing the old one for mechanised milking, and seeking financing to install some cooling tanks that will help them benefit more from each litre of milk.

"All around the world there is a food crisis. They want to take food and make it into fuel. We don't agree with that and we pay back the government's support by producing more food. This country can't continue feeding the people based on imports when there is so much land waiting to be worked," says Coirán.

In the 2004-2007 period, Venezuela's food production grew 3.4 percent, from 18.9 to 19.6 tonnes annually, according to government figures.

But former agriculture minister Hiram Gaviria points to how much is still lacking: in per capita terms, Venezuela today produces 88 percent of the food it generated in 1998, he told Tierramérica.

A long way from Barinas, across the Atlantic in Rome, world leaders gathered Jun. 3-5 at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) summit to debate ways to overcome the current food crisis.

At the former Santa Rita hacienda, thousands of hectares "recovered" by the government were handed over to other co-operatives or small farmers' associations that have not had the same success as Brisas del Masparro.

"We hold assemblies for the zone and we offer support. Even farther away, to Apure (in the country's far southwest) we have taken our experience and the young milk cows we have produced, which we sell them at low prices, but the individualism of many people means that what they are looking for is their own land," says Coirán.

Back in Barinas, one such individual, Alejandro, accompanies Tierramérica through the countryside. "We want to form a co-operative to work, but each one has his parcel of land that is free to be sold. With the agrarian charter, the land can't be transferred and will always belong to the government."

But Alejandro says that the neighbours of Brisas del Masparro are sympathetic to the experiment of the co-operative, and would like to take it as testimony of what can be achieved when working together.

"They have their reasons, the support of the revolutionary government, and that's good, but what will happen tomorrow if the government changes? One wants a piece of land to work, but also to leave to one's children," he says, as the orange sun sets over the plains of southwest Venezuela.

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