SOJA CULTIVATION IS UNCERTAIN

José Ignacio Abreu e Lima was a Brazilian who actively participated in the war of independence of our country and of Gran Colombia. He became one of the trusted generals of our Liberator. For this reason the regime baptized with its name a socialist agrarian project in the south of Anzoátegui state, destined mainly to the production of the soybean crop, to the construction of the storage infrastructure and plants to process products and byproducts of this item.

FUENTE

This year marks a decade that was signed the framework agreement of Paraná between the regime and the government of Brazil, within this agreement was the project Abreu e Lima. The source of financing was the Venezuelan Chinese Fund. The responsibility for the execution of the project was assigned to the Inder institute attached to the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, but this institute inexplicably signed a delegated administration contract with Odebrecht for the execution of the infrastructure.

Between February 2009 and July 2011, 232 million dollars of the Chinese Fund were allocated to the project. This amount according to the government represented 33% of the estimated investment of 700 million dollars. For the second half of 2013, Banco de Venezuela had invested 30 million dollars in the cultivation of soybeans.

FUENTE

In 2014, the Odebrecht portal described the project: the development of 35,000 hectares under irrigation, the construction of the agroindustrial complex for processing soybeans with a capacity of 30,000 tons per year and an animal feed facility with a capacity of 29 thousand tons per year. According to Odebrecht, the project also included roads, electrification and social infrastructure, projecting the construction of 491 homes with their urbanism for this purpose.

In this project, more than 645 million dollars have already been invested. This investment according to experts is not physically justified, since the construction of raw material processing plants has not been satisfactorily completed. As far as the development of the crop, what has been harvested are millionaire losses because the production and the productivity were very deficient. The road and electrification infrastructure barely reached the areas adjacent to the unfinished processing plants and the houses were never built.

FUENTE

The current status of the project is total abandonment, unfinished infrastructure has been looted, agricultural machinery and dismantled irrigation systems. In terms of agricultural production, it was never possible to plant and harvest the projected 35,000 hectares. In 2012 it was possible to plant the largest area since the project began, but did not cover even forty percent of the projected area, in the following years the planting area was decreasing until reaching its minimum coverage in 2017. The yields for hectare have been very low in relation to the experience of the area: 1,200 kilograms per hectare. In the 1990s, about 120,000 hectares were harvested with yields of between 2,500 and 3,000 kilograms per hectare.

The negative experience of the failure of this project is a sample of what this regime has done with the resources of our country. In addition to having received revenues of more than one billion dollars, the government borrowed more than fifty billion dollars from Chinese banks. Of this debt almost 700 million dollars went to this project. The resources destined there were in great proportion misappropriated, since after ten years of the beginning of the investment, not one kilo of soybeans has been processed and the producers who "embarked" in the agricultural activity were indebted.

Talking with a seed producer who tells me that he was hired by the company that managed the project, so he could plant 50 hectares of certified seed, which once delivered the seed produced had to wait a year to get paid. "They almost ruined me, he told us, I had a year with soybeans around my neck, fleeing the collectors" he confesses with the amazing good humor with which the orientals narrate their tragedy.
What could have been a great project to start covering our enormous deficit of oilseeds of vegetable origin of more than 95% per year, ended in a thunderous failure. But when we change this nefarious government, we can recover lost time and effort. The conditions are given, just lack the will of a new government that wants to develop the country. That's why we keep fighting. We will make it.