A failed Venezuelan government project to export bananas to the Russian Federation in 2010 provides the background to discuss the existence of different dimensions of agrarian extractivism in Venezuela and to compare the negative effects of neoliberal agrarian extractivism and neo-extractivism applied by governments of the left in the twentieth-first century. Two factors differentiate our study case from most other Latin American examples: 1) Venezuela is an oil rentier state and economy, and 2) a net food importer, according to the World Trade Organization. Thus, our objectives are to analyze the influence of oil rentierism in neo-extractivism and of neo-extractivism upon food security. The main argument of the article is that, though agrarian extractivism does not have the same weight that oil extractivism in Venezuela, the government attempted to extend to agriculture the oil rentier model without paying attention to its specific characteristics. Contrafactual analysis of the Russian-Venezuelan project and comparison of the situation of the plantain/banana complex in the Southern region of the Maracaibo Lake during the 1990s and after 2010 also confirm that, even having failed, the project had negative consequences for food security besides deepening environmental, social and economic problems. Methodologically, the article combines the description of a case study with counterfactual and comparative analysis to identify its consequences in different scenarios, based on information gathered between 2009 and 2012 and updated in 2016. Our aim is to contribute to the discussion of neo-extractivism in Latin America and broaden our understanding of the process that led to the present situation of food insecurity in Venezuela.
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