Land reforms averted food crisis in Venezuela: Chavez

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said the “agrarian revolution and land reforms” he has initiated helped the country face the global food crisis on its own strength, EFE news agency reported Sunday. “The agrarian revolution in Venezuela has been a vital step in the process of socialist changes since 1999,” Chavez said Saturday at an official ceremony marking the recovery of idle land from private ownership. “One element of that progress was the creation of a food bank, which never existed before in Venezuela,” Chavez said, adding that it has been been stocked with both domestic produces and imports. According to official data, the Venezuelan food bank contains one million tonnes of grains that would last for “at least two months”. In the first months of the current year, the country faced a food shortage and the government invested between January and April more than $2 billion to import food items, 46 percent more than in the same period of 2007.