Incredible: Venezuela will advise on poultry production!

The agreement between Venezuela and Palestine was signed on January 18 and touches the poultry, agricultural, health, tourism and mining markets.

The agreement was signed on January 18 between Venezuelan President, Nicolás Maduro (left), and Palestinian Chancellor, Riad Malki (right). | Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Popular Power for Foreign Affairs of Venezuela
The agreement was signed on January 18 between Venezuelan President, Nicolás Maduro (left), and Palestinian Chancellor, Riad Malki (right). | Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Popular Power for Foreign Affairs of Venezuela

Anything and everything can be said on paper, according to a rough translation of a saying in Spanish that implies that not everything written on paper should be believed. That applies to a curious news story released from Venezuela: the government of that Caribbean coastal country signed a cooperation agreement with the government of Palestine in several areas of production, including poultry agriculture.

Without doubt, it is something amazing. The so-called socialism of the 21st century that Venezuela exported during the last two decades has shown to be very good at fostering everything contrary to production in a country. On WATTAgNet, we have already covered the precarious conditions of the Venezuelan poultry producers, who acknowledge that their activity has decreased more than 50 percent in the last five years.

It is a well-documented tragedy. From previously being self-sufficient in poultry (and many other agricultural areas, so much so that contraband crops flowed to its Colombian neighbors), Venezuela today has to import almost all its food, including chickens and eggs, to alleviate the hunger of its famished population.

But trying to be positive, let’s think rather that this Palestinian-Venezuelan cooperation could be benefit from having as advisers the downtrodden Venezuelan poultry producers. Overall, Palestine has been economically blocked by Israel for 50 years, and that, in a way, establishes certain parallelism in which shared misfortune would help them find common solutions, for both South Americans and Middle Easterners.

In this way, one could understand such news, since the Venezuelan poultry producers are true gurus of corporate survival, as any entrepreneur in occupied Palestine should be. For example, to import raw materials (everything from grains to vaccines), you have to ask the government for dollars that are almost never available. Then, you must resort to the expensive black market.

Then, we have to see how a poultry producer manages to survive with two harsh additional Venezuelan economic realities: he/she must sell at the price imposed by the government (which does not take into account either hyperinflation or production costs) and on top of that, the rising wages – by populist decrees – of up to 40 percent, two or three times a year.

In both nations, all this promotes is informality, resorting to the black market and a lot of inventiveness (if not surreptitiousness) to try to stay afloat, while waiting for a storm that has lasted a long time to dissipate in Venezuela, as in Palestine. Considering this, the seemingly absurd spectacle of Venezuelan poultry advisers becomes sensible.

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