Here is a stratfor report on a promise by an agricultural federation not to raise prices without government approval:
Venezuela: Fegaven Will Not Raise Prices Without Government Approval
January 20, 2010
The Bolivarian Federation of Farmers and Cattle Ranchers of Venezuela (Fegaven) said Jan. 20 that product prices would rise only with government approval, Globovision reported, citing Fegaven President Balsamino Belandria. Belandria said agricultural producers are currently selling their products at prices established in official publication The National Gazette.
Communism always ends at agriculture because no amount of bureaucracy can make something grow or produce by ordering it too. You can send a thousand bureaucrats to the desert and insist that cows must give milk but they typically die instead. Like the Russians who believed that wheat would grow in Siberia because communism required it to, Chavez thinks that people can somehow sell goods for less than the cost of production because he tells them to.
The result? corruption or failure. At some point, the ‘Bolivarian federation of cattle farmers’ will set up a system of bribes so that the final price that is paid resembles the actual cost and usually, ends up being several times more expensive than typical free market prices for goods. So this organization can make all the promises it wants and Chavez can send all the soldiers he wants and give all the orders he wants. At the end of the day, it boils down to what you can get out of the ground and how.
