Скачать или смотреть Venezuela: Economic crisis bares hunger problem

(4 Jul 2016) Venezuela is suffering from severe food shortages that are making it hard for people to get enough to eat, even though the socialist country has the largest oil reserves in the world.
The food shortages are sparking protests across the country.
Government officials blame the shortfalls on right-wing business owners hoarding products to sow chaos, while their detractors say it's the result of chronic economic mismanagement.
At the same time, food production and imports are down and inflation is high.
Kelly Vega, a resident of Petare, Caracas' biggest shanty town, has lost 30 pounds (13 kilograms) in three months as she focused on feeding her 6-year-old daughter rather than herself.
Some Venezuelans who had given up produce as an unaffordable luxury are now turning to urban farming to get vegetables back into their diets.
With the help of a government-sponsored urban farming campaign, the newly created Ministry of Urban Agriculture hopes home gardens will make up 20 percent of the food supply by 2019.
Now, amid the narrow roads and crumbling shacks of one of South America's largest shanty towns, a careful look yields something unexpected: a tended tomato plant and a bush of basil leaves.
The family members growing the plants hope that in a few months, they'll be eating vegetables once again.
Francisco Salazar, head of a community council that works in Caracas shanty towns, says he and his neighbours are growing beets, black beans, lettuce and dozens of other vegetables in a large community garden.
But he worries it won't be enough.
A team of researchers from three leading local universities found that 12 percent of the population here skips meals.
Researchers say that's a sharp increase from a few years ago, when the price of oil had not yet crashed, and many Venezuelans still found it consistently easy to get the food they needed.


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