The more successful Turén farmers sought to diversify production to cope with price and yield fluctuations and also expanded into new areas to counter the loss of soil fertility the increasing chemical-dependent production system engendered . By 1990, the original colony had expanded from 15,000 to 250,000 hectares and had established a production system of rice, maize, sesame and sorghum, crops favorable to mechanization and that could feed into the agro-industrial system . Agricultural development, and the resultant growth in production of cereals and oilseeds, in Portuguesa between 1949-69 was considered a national agriculture ‘miracle’ as the government invested resources into irrigation projects, roads, windbreaks, housing and a rice processing plant that helped to solidify the new class of farmers in the area . However, while grower strategies of expansion and diversification were important for commercial farmers in Portuguesa, outcomes in the state varied. Successful commercial farmers in the Acarigua-Araure center grouped together in producer associations and used alternative sources of capital investment to expand into more profitable areas of the agroindustrial chain by developing processing plants for oilseed and cotton refining . Unlike the Acarigua- Araure growers, however, Turén producers didn’t have access to alternative financing to enable vertical integration, and although were able to expand and diversify production, became largely subordinated to the more powerful agro-industry sector as they assumed a role as producers of raw materials for processing centers . This dynamic intensified in the late 1970s and early 1980s as Venezuelan agriculture entered a crisis. A confluence of factors including reduced government subsidies and private investment in the sector, stagnant prices,hydroponic dutch buckets and the rapid increase of food imports contributed to a squeeze on the nation’s producers .
By 1983 vegetable production was 15% below 1977 levels, and the area under cultivation had fallen 25% . In the same time period, food imports rose from 35% to 65% of national consumption . Much of the disruption to the agriculture sector was due to OPEC’s—and by extension Venezuela’s—successful efforts to raise oil prices. The resultant influx of petro-dollars to Venezuela’s newly nationalized oil sector drove currency appreciation, which facilitated increased food imports and reduced the competitiveness of domestic producers. The crisis drove further mechanization and intensification in Portuguesa’s agricultural sector, as the state’s commercial elite saw increasing production as the solution to a context of stagnant prices coupled with rapidly rising costs of production . The agrarian malaise reflected the general political and economic crisis of the 1980s as oil prices dropped. The Venezuelan government implemented reforms to boost agricultural production, including deregulating controlled food prices, issuing of low-interest loans, increasing fertilizer subsidies, and mandating that commercial banks lend to a portion of their reserves to farmers . The policy prescriptions fed the so-called Venezuelan ‘agricultural miracle’ of 1983-87 that saw strong sectoral growth and production rises in a number of key crops. Maize, sorghum and cotton production levels doubled over 1983 levels . Continuing macroeconomic woes however pressured subsequent governments to accept orthodox conditionalities of the International Monetary Fund that began to restructure the economy at large and largely dismantled polices aimed at food self sufficiency by reducing agricultural price supports and input subsidies. The implementation of structural adjustment policies, however, resulted in severe social upheaval, including the 1989 Caracazo. The upswell of protest from Venezuela’s citizenry opened political space for the government to reinstate some subsidies to the agricultural sector. In sum, as the 20th century closed Portuguesa had been transformed into dominant agrarian player, with a vertically-integrated commercial agricultural sector.
With Acarigua-Araure serving as the agro-industrial core and as an important regional market for seeds, machinery and agricultural services in the state, Portuguesa functioned practically as an agrarian enclave economy as it became the premier agro-industrial center in the country . The success of the commercial sector was predicated on interventionist state policy that broke up landowner power, provided credit, input subsidies, infrastructure and technical support, and maintained government-protected, domestic markets . The emergent agro-industrial sector had little connection to the earlier agricultural export sector of coffee and cacao, although some traditional latifundio interests did evolve into commercial elite. The agrarian reform sector near agro-industrial commercial development was subordinated to the accumulation needs of the commercial sector. While commercial agriculture established itself in areas with well-developed and largely government-financed infrastructure much of the state remained largely untransformed. Agrarian development established two coexisting production systems: an agro-industrial model centered in the municipalities of Páez, Araure, Esteller, Turén and Ospino; and areas of continued peasant production, especially prevalent in Guanare, Guanarito and Sucre . The peasant sector in the immediate geographical path of commercial agriculture had been displaced and sometimes absorbed into the new industrial sector as labor, or had continued to function largely as before in areas further afield from Portuguesa’s agro-industrial corridors.Portuguesa’s commercial sector is concentrated along the number 5 highway, the major transportation artery in the area that links Portuguesa to the important commercial cities of Barquisiemto, Valencia and Caracas. Agro-industrial crop production is focused near the main transportation corridors while mostly small-scale coffee production is located primarily in the highland areas of Sucre, Ospino and Monseñor José Vicente de Unda municipalities.
Cattle ranching— primarily for milk production—remains in some savanna areas, particularly in low laying lands that seasonally flood and remain relatively far from infrastructure networks in Guanarito and Papelón. In 2001 Portuguesa accounted for 90.5% of domestic sesame production, 51% of rice, 41% of sorghum, 40% of corn and over 30% of sugarcane . In 2013, Portuguesa accounted for over half of all maize production in the country, producing 1,031,765 tons . Portuguesa is not a site of petroleum production or processing. Of theoretical note is that in the oil curse literature, oil development displaces agriculture in terms of share of national GDP, contributes to Dutch disease dynamics that favor imports over national production, and—at a regional level—can displace agriculture at specific sites of production.Yet, Portuguesa demonstrates—in areas with favorable conditions—agriculture can become a regionally dominant sector in particular historical contexts. According to Grinberg and Starosta , capitalist sectors in oil states are limited in their capital accumulation process by the nature of oil rent redistribution. While the capture oil rent allows for their reproduction on a domestic scale they are generally unable to compete in international markets . In Venezuela, a contingent of Portuguesa growers were successful in consolidating a dominant position in supplying domestic markets. Part of this success was also based in expanding vertically in domestic agro-industrial chains, and using smaller producers to help feed the local processing and packaging enterprises they now controlled. The issues of land reform and domestic food production have been prominent controversies within Venezuela in the Chavista period. The intense reaction of commercial grower associations to the 2001 Land Reform Law and its explicit calls for the elimination of Venezuela’s latifundia established an early context of conflict between agriculture elites and the state. The perceived attack on private property rights codified in the Land Reform Law has been cited as one of the primary drivers of sharpening opposition resistance to the Chavista government and of contributing to the 2002 coup de tat that briefly removed Chávez from power . The government’s anti-latifundia rhetoric was portrayed by government critics as generating class conflict, violence and sense of lawlessness in rural areas . Agriculture, food and land reform policies have, thus, served as important points of conflict between the Chavista government and its political opposition and cannot be separated from broader social conflict over the Chavista-era ‘revolutionary’ program. However,bato bucket conceptualizations of dynamics between the state and the commercial agriculture sector as primarily conflictive mask a set of policy relationships that are more ambivalent. A closer examination of policy dynamics reveal that state policies often support sectors of commercial agriculture and reinforce agribusiness socio-economic position in rural areas. Perhaps most salient issue in terms of conflict between commercial agriculture and the state is the threat of confiscation of land via the Land Reform Law. Indeed, the law was one of the most controversial components of the government’s 2001 reform package . Through 2013, 6,897,872 hectares have been recovered, and 11,901,752 hectares have been regularized by the state under the Land Reform Law .
Despite the quantity of land recovered by the state and political controversy and violence connected to the agrarian reform, the process of land expropriation has largely bypassed producers in much of the commercial agriculture sector. The relatively low land seizure pressure on commercial producers in Portuguesa results from government negotiations with estate owners, dynamics between state institutions and producers at the local level, and an increasing policy trend focused on maintaining agricultural production levels rather than on addressing levels of land inequality. It is difficult to ascertain how much land was seized by the government from private interests, especially on the level of individual states. At the time of writing, government data on land recovery and redistribution released by the MPPAT and INTI were national totals and did not break down numbers by individual states or municipalities. There were no available, reliable data on how many private estates in Portuguesa had been subject to recovery by the state or had been occupied by peasant groups. Commercial growers in Portuguesa, however, stated that the threat of expropriation was a central incentive to continue production in the face of low prices and other productive or profitability challenges . In Portuguesa, growers cited the cases of the 2,276 hectare Dos Caminos and the 1,779 hectare Palo Gordo estates recovered in 2012 by INTI as emblematic cases of seizures from landowners in the region. Negotiation with landowners for partial redistribution is often attractive for policymakers as it theoretically speeds up land redistribution and avoids drawn-out legal process and appeals. It also potentially diminishes opposition to reforms as landowners can receive payment for lands lying idle on estates, as under the Land Reform Law estate owners are entitled to compensation for seized lands. Oil revenue theoretically allows the government to pay market rates for seizures, giving it an advantage over more cash-poor countries attempting an agrarian reform that compensates landholders. It is unclear, however, to what degree compensation has been paid in the Venezuela land reform. A high-profile expropriation case involving estates owned by the British Vestey Group was resolved with the government and the company negotiating the transfer of two estates to the government in exchange for the retention of 8 other estates and a payment of £2.4 million . Yet there is no clear data on whether or not payment was delivered to landowners in the majority of cases of land recovery. Some seizures of sugar plantations in the state of Yaracuy, for example, were ultimately implemented under the rationale that private land titles were invalid due to the area being designated as an indigenous reserve before the establishment of the plantations . As the plantations occupied technically state land no indemnity was paid. Regardless, a strategy of negotiation with landowners by the state in policy implementation has implications for the nature of the reform. As in the case of many historical land reforms the division of estates with property owners can often leave the most productive land—with better soils and well-developed infrastructure—in the hands of landowners, which solidifies their relative position in the agriculture system even as it may diminish the size of absolute holdings. Redistribution pressure on private interests in the agrarian sector was also dependent on changing relationships between government institutions and commercial interests. In early periods of the reform government positions at the state or municipal level in some areas were in the hands of politicians that opposed the Land Reform Law. In Yaracuy and Cojedes states early land occupations by peasants were removed violently by state police forces under the control of opposition governors . The subsequent election of Chavista politicians to state-level offices was an important shift in local conditions that allowed peasant groups to re-occupy estates with a greatly reduced—although not entirely eliminated—threat of removal by state security forces . The control of key local offices by Chavista politicians or functionaries, however, did not ensure an even approach to policy implementation. Growers in Portuguesa cited that the changing of directors of MPPAT and INTI at the state level impacted how aggressively redistribution was promoted by the government.