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Venezuela Farming Technology
Venezuelan farmers' use of purchased inputs--such as
fertilizers, tractors, and irrigation water--to increase
their
productivity, remained closely tied to government
promotional
policies. For example, Venezuelan farmers enjoyed generous
subsidies for the purchase of domestically produced
fertilizers
after 1958. As a result, fertilizer use increased greatly.
From
1980 to 1986, the application of fertilizers more than
doubled,
from 64 to 141 kilograms per hectare. In 1989 the Pérez
administration reduced fertilizer subsidies from 90
percent to 30
percent. This action had little effect on agricultural
production
because fertilizer usage already exceeded optimum levels
in many
areas.
In 1989 MAC administered twenty-four irrigation
projects that
covered 261,600 hectares. Only 40 percent of this
irrigated area,
however, actually received water from irrigation projects.
Poor
management and inadequate maintenance of the irrigation
systems
prevented the remainder of the land from reaching its full
potential. Nonetheless, irrigation projects enabled the
country
to improve its productivity and self-sufficiency in some
crops,
most notably rice.
Credit and agricultural extension services were two
other
tools employed by the government to improve farming
practices.
Successive governments, beginning in the 1960s,
established
scores of development finance institutions exclusively for
agriculture
(see Banking and Financial Services
, this
ch.). In
the 1980s, dozens of such lenders provided finance for
agriculture at widely varying rates depending on the loan,
the
product involved, and the type of institution from which
it
originated. Commercial banks also held extensive
agricultural
portfolios as government laws required that 22.5 percent
of all
credit be allocated to that sector. In addition, bankers
and
other government finance institutions lent to farmers and
ranchers at a rate as low as one-third of the prevailing
commercial rate. By contrast, government agricultural
extension
efforts were less aggressive. The country's extremely low
yields
in many crops and livestock were attributable, in part, to
the
inadequacy of extension services. MAC's National
Agricultural and
Livestock Research Fund (Fondo Nacional de Investigaciones
Agropecuarios) performed research and provided some
minimal
extension services for farmers. Universities and
institutes, such
as the Simón Bolívar United World Agriculture Institute in
Caracas, also contributed to agricultural and
environmental
research. More typically, farmers obtained technical
assistance
from producer associations to which they belonged.
Data as of December 1990
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