By Daniela Gonzalez

In the last couple of weeks before writing this report, we have seen increases in food prices. Yes, it's scary: salaries (and pensions) are not going up, and much less with the oil revenues being cut.

These revenues were injected into the Venezuelan economy for laundering, but they worked as a buffer to keep the public's confidence in "the system".

Now, the "system" is belly up.

Let's begin.

Setting the scene

Most of the egg and poultry production is in charge of semi-industrial farms, which have to use industrially-produced foods, loaded with growing synthetic hormones and God knows what else.

The family farms are few and scattered; most of them prefer to run their operations at a small scale to avoid unwanted attention. The lapse between 2017 and 2021 with trespassers stealing farm animals was a hard lesson, still fresh in our minds, and with so many armed and masked groups, we don't know what could happen. Sure, they are brave, as they're the only ones toting AKs.

But let's give it a less tragic approach to the topic. In the realm of sustainable agriculture and animal husbandry, the practice of raising chickens and laying hens with a minimum of dependence on commercially processed feed is the sort of resilience we want. While the convenience of ready-made formulations might seem "appealing", a deeper examination reveals compelling reasons – like nutritional superiority, economic prudence, and ethical considerations – to champion a more autonomous approach to poultry nutrition.