Just as Robert Mugabe ruined Zimbabwe -- formerly "the jewel of Africa" -- with his "agrarian reforms", tyrant Hugo Chavez is preparing to seize private farms and convert them to "collective property". History has shown that this will not work well. When Zimbabwe was known as Southern Rhodesia it exported food to its neighbors and was incredibly prosperous... now people there are starving to death. How's socialism working in Venezuela?
Chavez, who hosted Sunday's program from a ranch in Venezuela's sun-baked plains, said his government would move to expropriate large ranches and farms spanning more than 300,000 hectares (740,000 acres) and redistribute lands deemed "idle" to the poor under a nationwide agrarian reform.Since the reform began five years ago, officials have redistributed over 1.9 million hectares (4.6 million acres) of land that had been classified as unproductive or lacked property documents dating back to 1847, according to a recent government census.
Critics say reform has failed to revive Venezuela's agriculture industry, which does not produce enough food to satisfy domestic demand. The government has been forced to import food amid shortages of staples such as meats, milk and sugar.
The quickest way to ruin a country is to nationalize private property and turn it over to the masses.
