Raising Cattle A Risky Business For Venezuela Ranchers

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Raising cattle a risky business for Venezuela ranchers

Rotting hides on the road are all that is left of three butchered cows.

Barinas, Venezuela, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Dec, 2018 ) :Rotting hides on the road are all that is left of three butchered cows.

Such carnage is common in Venezuela's cattle country, where thieves, squatters and government policy threaten a vital food resource.

Venezuela's severe economic crisis is felt keenly in cities -- where food sources are limited -- but it's also cutting a swathe through what should be the country's food basket.

Seeing the hides on the road -- the handiwork of cattle poachers -- Jose Labrador stops his truck and explodes with rage.

"It's as if they were telling us: 'We are killing your cattle, so what?'" the 46-year old rancher says, fuming that complaining is useless -- police and local authorities will do nothing.

Labrador and other farmers in the cattle-rearing region of San Silvestre, in the western state of Barinas, say they are in a state of siege -- from squatters, gunmen and government price controls that make their farms unprofitable.

"I can't sleep on the farm anymore because I'm scared," said Jose Antonio Espinoza, owner of a 600-head herd in San Silvestre.

"They have come around here and tied people up, and then stolen everything -- chainsaws, water pumps, cattle."