Missteps as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez backs farming

By Frank Jack Daniel

MANTECAL, Venezuela (Reuters) - Deep in Venezuela's sweltering heartland, a gleaming dairy plant sits idle, a testament to missteps that slow President Hugo Chavez's drive to make his oil nation self-sufficient in food.

Dozens of workers in yellow rubber boots sluice water to keep metal pipes clean, ready to churn out pasteurized milk and cheese, but the site has barely operated since a team of Iranian technicians built it 10 months ago.

What may seem an obvious obstacle has yet to be overcome -- too few dairy cows are raised in the harsh plains where the plant is located to provide enough milk to keeping it running.

"It's like they put their pants on before their underwear," said Humberto Taquiva, a cobbler who is also an agricultural adviser in the tiny plains town of Mantecal, trying to persuade farmers to produce milk for the plant.

With world food prices at all-time highs and hurt by sporadic shortages of basic products last year, Chavez is determined to reduce Venezuela's dependence on costly imports and make its fields more productive.

"Some day Venezuela will export food," the leftist president said April 24 during a visit to a newly irrigated corn farm in the neighboring state of Barinas, where new tractors worked the land. "Output keeps on rising."

OIL EXPORTER, FOOD IMPORTER

Venezuela is a lush country but agriculture collapsed when oil crowded out coffee and cocoa farms in the 1920s.