Implementation is characterised by collapsing production of food, cronyism, enrichment of political allies of the governing faction and use of expropriation to carry out vendettas
The expropriation of land and other assets without compensation by governments is not a new practice. It has been done before, not merely in the distant past but in the very recent past. The consequences are sobering and should lead policymakers to reconsider what may seem politically expedient in the short term, but offers catastrophe not only for the expropriated but for the expropriators as well.
The experience of brutally colonised Kazakhstan in the 20th century set the stage for what was to be repeated elsewhere. In 1927 and 1928, Russian forces expropriated grain and livestock from the nomadic peoples of the steppes. In 1929 they expropriated the holdings of the independent peasantry. In 1930 and 1931 agricultural output collapsed and the numbers of sheep and goats declined by 70% and 90% respectively.
The expropriation of farmland led to a collapse in the harvests and the slaughter of livestock; between 1928 and 1932 the number of cattle and horses dropped by nearly half, pigs declined from 26-million to 12-million, and sheep and goats from 146-million to 50-million. The regime, which through the state oil monopoly Petróleos de Venezuela controls the world’s largest proven reserves of petroleum, brushed off the problem by using oil revenues to import huge quantities of food. In 2010, even the Venezuelan government admitted that tens of thousands of tonnes of imported food were allowed to rot by corrupt state firms.
That expropriation has been followed by others, even of those who could provide title documentation, as the Venezuelan government has seized millions of hectares of land to award to loyal cronies and political supporters of the regime, who, unsurprisingly, are rarely efficient farmers. The Venezuelan story is not over. The situation in the country continues to deteriorate as food shortages become worse, exacerbated by shortages of electricity, medicine and even petrol in a country that once was one of the world’s greatest petroleum exporters, meaning that whatever food there is cannot be transported from farms to consumers.
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