VENEZUELA:
British Corporation and Government Smoke Agrarian Peace Pipe
Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, (IPS) - Britain's Vestey Group of companies has handed over two cattle ranches covering 56,000 hectares to the Venezuelan government, in return for keeping another eight totalling 258,000 hectares, in an agreement that has been presented as a model within the agrarian reform process underway.

Agroflora, the Venezuelan subsidiary of Vestey, "does not feel it has lost anything, rather it has gained confidence in its future, and the country has gained, because we have contributed not only land, but also production," Diana Dos Santos, the president of the company, told IPS. The company, which was established in Venezuela a century ago, produces 9,000 tons of beef a year, she added.

Venezuela, with a population of 26.5 million, has a national herd of approximately 13 million cattle, and imports 72,000 tons of beef a year, according to the Ministry of Food.

The agreement, announced on Mar. 22, "shows that the way forward for real or supposed owners of lands is dialogue and understanding. The company could have chosen to use legal proceedings, but instead they accepted the alternative - negotiating with the government," said Agriculture Minister Elías Jaua.

According to a land law enacted in 2001 that has put ranchers at loggerheads with the government, rural landholders must demonstrate their "chain of title" - the succession of land title deeds and sales contracts û going back to before 1848, when the new republic passed the first law on commons and fallow lands.

Jaua added, however, that even if the property rights to an estate have been established, if the land is underutilised, required for a strategic programme, or under social pressure from families who need land, the State can legally expropriate it.

This is what happened in the Vestey case. The government Land Institute (INTI) disputed the ownership or the level of use of the company's ten estates, and finally consolidated its claim on just one property, the 43,000-hectare San Pablo Paeño ranch, in the southern plains region of Apure.

"Thirty cooperatives with 900 workers will be established, a centre for genetic improvement of cattle will be created, and the School of Agronomy of the (public) University of the Plains will have an experimental field station there," Jaua announced.

Fifteen months ago, the governor of the state of Cojedes, Johnny Yánez, moved in with army support to inspect another Vestey ranch, El Charcote, with an area of 13,000 hectares, in the central plains region. A large part of the estate had been occupied by local small farmers (campesinos) claiming land.

Eliécer Otaiza, the former president of INTI, stated a year ago that Vestey was unable to prove its chain of title further back than 1850, and he distributed "agrarian charters" permitting 110 families to continue to occupy plots of land on the estate.

The government does not grant ownership title to the land, but only charters which provide the right to occupy and cultivate it. "This means the land cannot be sold or used as collateral against bank loans, and it discourages the farmer, who has no assurance that the land he works will be passed on to his children," Jesús Salazar, a professor of agronomy at the Central University, commented to IPS.

In September, there was a shift in the conflict when leftist President Hugo Chávez, holding up a map in front of television cameras, distributed the 8,490-hectare La Marqueseña ranch in the southwestern plains of Barinas.

Chávez left 1,500 hectares for the Azpurúa family who owned the ranch, set aside 2,700 hectares as a forested reserve protecting a dam, and handed the rest over to a small farmers' cattle-raising business, together with a 23 million dollar loan.

At that point, Vestey took a step back, abandoned litigation and concentrated on negotiating with INTI. At the same time, it was able to prove that its "chain of title" to El Charcote went back to the 18th century, when Venezuela was still a Spanish colony.

However, what Jaua called a "social commitment" to the occupying farmers prevailed, and the estate will be transferred to INTI. Vestey will receive an indemnity of 4.2 million dollars for the land and the improvements made on it. Livestock, machinery and furniture will not be transferred to INTI.

In exchange, INTI will certify that the other Vestey estates are "productive farms," not fallow or underutilised lands, and they will then be safe from government intervention or expropriation.

"This negotiation is positive for both parties," stated Jesper Edelmann, a Vestey executive. "We are grateful to INTI for understanding our point of view," he added.

The current president of INTI, Richard Vivas, was proud that "by this alternative method of conflict resolution we have recovered 169,000 hectares, as part of plans to recover 3.4 million hectares." Some two million hectares have been allocated to 160,000 landless rural families since 2003.

Venezuela has 91 million hectares of land, including 15 million hectares of timber-yielding forest. Of these, 36 million hectares are arable, Franklin Chacín, the dean of the School of Agronomy at the Central University, told IPS.

Vivas remarked to IPS that INTI has enough information from land inventories and soil studies to back up its decisions about property and the proper use of land, although detailed inventory-taking has only begun in two small southeastern states.

The main conflicts over land involve the flood plains of the Orinoco River and its tributaries, which cover one-third of the country. These lands are used for cattle ranching, and are also a source of freshwater, in underground aquifers, Carlos Machado, a lecturer in agrarian economy, pointed out to IPS.

In other regions, such as Yaracuy, an area of agricultural valleys in the northeast of the country, there are disputes between land-occupying campesinos and the owners of small- and medium-sized farms, many of whom are Spanish immigrants.

Vivas said the programmes for recovering lands and assigning them to families who will farm them "take into account the ecological aspects of flora, fauna and aquifer conservation, and also the possibility of using them to advantage in ecotourism projects.."