Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Venezuela moves on land plan

By DAVID ADAMS
Published March 24, 2005

The Venezuelan government has gone ahead with the threatened confiscation of land belonging to a cattle ranch owned by a wealthy British meat producing company.

Farming permits for some 12,000 acres were handed out to local peasant farmers this week after government inspectors found the company, Vestey Group, could not prove legal ownership.

Critics have denounced the land interventions as an attack on private property by Venezuela's revolutionary government. President Hugo Chavez, a fiery former paratroop commander and close ally of Cuban President Fidel Castro, recently declared "war" on the country's large "landed estates."

The land is part of a government program to redistribute hundreds of thousands of acres of illegally-held land to the poor, according to the National Lands Institute. Government officials are expected to move against other large estates in the central state of Cojedes in the next two weeks, including the renowned Hato Pinero wildlife reserve.

The confiscation, accounting for more than a third of the Vestey Group's 32,000-acre El Charcote cattle ranch, surprised the owners who said they had received no notification.

El Charcote was "intervened" by government land inspectors in January. Under a 2001 land reform law large landholdings can be seized if owners cannot prove legal title dating to 1830, or if the land is idle or underutilized.

The Vestey Group is one of the largest meat producers in Venezuela and owns several large Venezuelan cattle ranches. It denies its land at El Charcote is idle or illegally held, blaming peasant squatters for disrupting operations in recent years.

Agroflora, the Vestey Group's local subsidiary, said it would appeal the seizure. The Vestey Group says it has invested large amounts of money over the years in enhancing productivity through cross breeding, artificial insemination and other methods, which have benefited the industry.

Cojedes state authorities have already announced they want farmers to plant sugar cane on the seized land. The state government recently spent $250-million to purchase a mothballed sugar mill from Cuba, refitted with Brazilian technology.

But owners say most of the land is unsuitable for agricultural use because of the poor soil and heavy seasonal rains in the Andean flood plain.

[Last modified March 24, 2005, 11:34:14]