Portuguesa, December 3, 2022 (Press MinComunas) – On Saturday, during an assembly at the premises of the Chiriguare Commune, in the Ospino municipality of Portuguesa state, several Communes of the national territory and the People’s Power Ministry for Communes and Social Movements signed the political agreement of the Integral Productive Farm Schools program under a collective vision of promoting Venezuela’s food sovereignty.
Minister Jorge Arreaza, the Vice Ministers of Communal Economy and the System of Communal Formation and Social Movements, Hernan Vargas and Richard Delgado, respectively, and representatives of base organizations from 11 states of the country that will be part of the program, attended the meeting.
The initiative is a space for the empowerment of the Communes through co-management of the educational service. It guarantees its full enjoyment as a right and strengthens the productive capacity.
Vicente Campos, a producer of the host Integral Productive Farm School, explained that the intention is not only to work the land and encourage the use of native seeds but also to continue the training processes of the Communal Councils. The idea is for them to have the vision to make the most of the spaces in their different production units.
“We are the responsible ones as producers because we must feel that desire to work in the field because it is the way we are going to have later on to sustain ourselves; we have to generate awareness in the new generations,” said the communal spokesman.
Through the Integral Productive Farm Schools, the aim is to guide and raise agricultural and livestock production capacities, promoting the production processing by the communities.
Minister Jorge Arreaza emphasized during his speech at the assembly the historical character of this training process, which is indispensable to building socialism in the territory.
“Let’s give it that historical character. You are betting on order, organization, and knowledge. We would do nothing with an almost perfect organization if we cannot inject it with wisdom, knowledge, science, and knowledge,” he emphasized.
The Minister of Communes and Social Movements characterized training as a transversal element to build a socialist society.
“The path we have taken is the one that Commander Chavez left us as an order, but also as a method to build another society: The Communal State,” he added.
And paraphrasing Uruguayan intellectual Eduardo Galeano, Arreaza said: “Our communal society is our utopia.”
For this, the minister suggested, it is also necessary to move towards the establishment of new production relations based on the consolidation of Communal Economic Circuits, in which the intervention of the State is fundamental.
“We must make a great effort to conform them because, if we do not have it and do not close it, we may have the lands under new management. We can use organic seeds, but after we have the beans or corn, the intermediary comes, takes it, then sells it in a capitalist market. They stole our work, the value. They stole everything from us. We have to get from the bio-input to the final distribution,” said the minister.
A sovereign project
On behalf of the Socialist Commune “Che Guevara,” of Merida state, the communal spokeswoman Hilmar Rodriguez synthesized the organization, training, and integration as a force they are exercising to promote a collective project “unquestionably sovereign.” This project contemplates the struggle for the environment and “the next struggle to be faced, the world struggle for food.”
“It is with the knowledge that we will manage to graft socialism in a system that, in this case, generates a productive chain that goes from its beginnings with seeds to the end of the cycle: consumption,” he added.
For Professor Jose Luis Berroteran, former Minister of Agriculture and Lands, the creation of the Integral Productive Farm Schools crystallizes dreams, effort, and the strength accompanied by reason to achieve concrete results.
“Here there is a contingent of men and women giving their all, who have a concrete characteristic to dedicate themselves totally to agriculture […] The integral farm schools will be signs of endogenous development, of sovereignty and, above all, of technological independence”, he said.
During the meeting, they delivered training certificates to the representatives of the Communes that will form these schools. These spokespersons, in turn, will have the task of training the other members of the grassroots organizations of the People’s Power.
