Libertarian Farmers Lobby Against S. 510

has done to Venezuela and Cuba.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_12/b41710466...

Caracas - It's 10 a.m., and tempers are already flaring at the Cada supermarket in Caracas' San Bernardino neighborhood. The store has just taken delivery of two pallets of 4- and 11-pound sacks of sugar. With dozens of shoppers swarming around him, Rigoberto Fernández tries to pass out the bags one by one. The clerk hands a smaller one to a gray-haired woman, but she flings it back. "How dare you tell me I can't have one of the larger bags?" she screams. The sack splits open, spilling sugar everywhere.

Within 10 minutes, the shipment has vanished. "I am so fed up with these food shortages," Fernández mutters as he sweeps up the mess. "People get desperate and start behaving like animals."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's response to the food shortages: find a scapegoat, in this case supermarket owners. On Jan. 17, the mercurial leader expropriated six Exito stores, controlled by France's Groupe Casino. A month later he seized Cada, another Casino chain, with 35 supermarkets and eight distribution centers.

El Presidente's efforts to transform his country into a Cuban-style socialist state are sputtering. With its vast oil wealth, Venezuela shouldn't suffer from shortages, yet inefficient farms, government takeovers of supermarkets, and a 50% currency devaluation in January have thrown the food supply into disarray. That's bad news for Chávez, whose anti-capitalist message and ceaseless drive to undermine U.S. influence in Latin America have made him Washington's biggest headache in the region. Chávez's approval rating among Venezuelans has dropped to about 45% from 70% three years ago.

Supplying low-cost food to the poor has been a centerpiece of Chávez's presidency. He has expropriated food processors, stores, and more than 6 million acres of farms and ranches, convinced that the government can feed Venezuela better than the private sector does. Under state ownership, though, production has suffered. From 1999 to 2008, per capita, sugar cane was off by 8%, fruit declined by 25%, and beef production dropped by 38%, according to Carlos Machado, an expert in agriculture at the Institute of Higher Administrative Studies, a business school in Caracas. "The cooperatives have failed and our cattle ranching has been decimated," Machado says. (more)

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=353160&CategoryId=...

HAVANA – State-run food markets in the Cuban capital received only 60 percent of expected deliveries in January and just 64 percent in February, Communist Party daily Granma said Wednesday, adding that the agricultural reforms implemented by President Raul Castro have not yet yielded results.

Granma reported that a scarcity of pesticides and fuel resulted in “costly damages” and pointed to supply and marketing problems, but also noted that the small-scale producers at the center of a plan to boost farm output say the changes in the sector “are not yet as beneficial as they had hoped.”

“At times, excessive obstacles and prohibitions are breeding grounds for crime and bribery,” according to the newspaper, which cited excessive bureaucracy, lack of coordination and rigidity in food production and distribution. (more)

The former USSR destroyed food production as well as have countless African nations where government took over management of food production. The evidence is clear.

As the US government increasingly takes over the farm economy we will face starvation also.