My first reaction, seeing this somewhat macabre Easter-week Chart of the Day in The Economist, is that it has to be a mistake:
Really? Venezuela is like a world power in bunny-meat production?! And most of it is consumed internally?
Maybe I’m just as out of touch as y’all think I am, but…really?! Where is all this ravenous rabbit-eating taking place?
This amounts to 17 kg. of rabbit meat per person per year. To put it in perspective, in 2008 the consumption of beef was 22 kg. per person. Pork? 5 kg. per person.
So here are our Top Five Theories about how this hare-brained notion could imaginably be true:
- The bulk of rabbit deaths occur in “enfrentamientos de bandas.”
- The rabbits are hiding underground mientras se va el loco.
- Latest fad in chavista high circles: rabbit meat and caviar, washed down with 48-year old Scotch.
- Rabbits are starving because of the scarcity of carrots.
- The Economist thinks chigüires are rabbits.
I mean, seriously, the only time I’ve had rabbit in Venezuela is when I ordered lapa in a swank Caracas restaurant, and got Bugs instead. The bastards …
Somebody at MinPoPoAgricultura is having fun with the gringos from The Economist, because that number simply can’t be right. Either that or you people are all eating rabbit, thinking you’re buying beef.
I´m just scared!!
Is it possible that somebody is trying to “meternos gato por liebre”?
Of Mice and Men :
“I remember about the rabbits, George.” “The hell with the rabbits. That’s all you can ever remember is them rabbits.” (1.18-19)
“Well, we ain’t got any,” George exploded. “Whatever we ain’t got, that’s what you want. God a’mighty, if I was alone I could live so easy. I could go get a job an’ wo…
Secure ports for PDVSA rabbits?
La mayoría de los conejos son consumidos en el Merendero El Gavilán, por allá por Sartenejas, por estudiantes de la USB. No con güisqui, sino con pura polarcita.
Maybe because we are a bunch of conejos here…
Strange. Perhaps things are a changing, after all
http://espanol.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090728104851AAj8cVS
Yo creo que estan metiendo gato por liebre….
Se te cayó la cédula. I’m guessing you were SO an angsty teen in the late 80s.
Busted!…
It claims that the data comes from the FAO, but on the FAO website the numbers are different. You can get the stats here:
http://faostat.fao.org/site/569/DesktopDefault.aspx?PageID=569#ancor
According to that, the highest production was 299000 in 2007, with most other years being around 150000. Though it’s still more rabbit meat than I expected.
Nothing new. Divide el número de Chavistas (5,000,000?) entre el número de kilos de conejos producido (481,000,000) y el resultado (96,2) es el peso de un Chavista average.
So:
#Chavistas produced in Venezuela / #Kilos of “conejos produced”
=
Average weight of a pro Chavez voter. Simple.
Wow, they´re getting bulky…
Be wewie quiet, i’m hunting wabits
Actually, I used to go rabbit hunting some 35 years ago in San Felipe, so we ended up eating a lot of it — conejo en coco, uhmmmm
Meant to say 25 years ago. I’m old, but not that old
I once had rabbit 25 years ago when I was in Colombia.
The explanation is staring at you in the face, right in those charts and you don’t see it?
Look at the imports chart. Who’s in second place? Belgium.
Kepler lives in Belgium.
Ahi se los dejo……..
…It’s obvious we are now producing rabbit-based beer…
Well…this is weird. Belgians have loads of restaurants, 3 times what the Netherlands has for less population…and yet I have only seen once people eating rabbit meat. The only bunnies they keep eating are chocolate ones.
On the other side, I miss a discussion about food production/market in Venezuela that is connected with what is happening outside Venezuela. It seems we have, as usual, parallel monologues.
They must be talking about old Conejos, not Conejos Fuerte…
….huh?
IDK. Maybe the crocodile/caiman industries are switching from using chicken pieces as feed, maybe bunny is the new biofuel for cars, maybe they’re being actually being rabbitnapped and conscripted into the new militia?
It must be a racket, everything anomalous in Venezuela is associated with a racket or corruption, maybe the Government busy the rabbits as if they were tenderloin and burns them, something like that.
Can anyone check production of salmorejo?
Well, I have seen occasionally rabbit in the Live produce section of Quinta Crespo market (the same place where you can get live hen and chicken for all your hallaca needs) and in the frozen meats section of some “posh” supermarkets like Exelsior Gama and Plaza. I even think we ate rabbit one Christmas dinner, trying to scape the omnipresent pernil. But then again, I have seen more goat, duck, and lamb on those fridges than rabbit.
And now I’m fearing for the origin of my beloved milanesas… OMG the dude in the chicken stand in San Martín has been bullshitting my mom for years!
Lia, don’t worry. Conejitos are very small. Impossible to mistake chicken breast for rabbit meat. They are so skinny! And expensive, I might add. (lots of bones, very little meat).
Honestly, this piece of news is totally a lie. I’m clueless about it though.
I actually got curious about this and tried to see if there was any other statistics on rabbit production in Venezuela, but couldn’t find anything. The FAO database indicates the data is “estimated”, which could mean anything up to and including a pure SWAG (silly, wild-ass, guess). In any case, FAO (a department of the UN) didn’t do their job, nor did the Economist, to have allowed such a ridiculous figure to be published.
On a broader note, like the “official” figures for petroleum production, how can any statistical information about Venezuela be believed? Simply put, within the community of nations, Venezuela does not work and play well with others.
I for one would surely invest in a movie named Hugo and the BunnyMen it would be a natural for Bolivarian Mystery Science Theatre2020, or failing that it would be an excellent name for a $432 pr0_n flick.
How many rabbits are there on 481000 tones of rabbit (meat)?
I wonder where that rabbit farm is.
FAO has some curious statements lately about food crisis.
Although there have been recently quite dramatic developments with clima change and then the drought/fires in Russia/Ukraine, they have hardly mentioned 1) the issue of ethanol and 2) the big big big issue of very dramatic speculation with food prices, something I have heard over and over again in German news, among other places, and even stock market experts, even those who are speculating themselves (not just economist-journalists, who are the norm on ZDF, for instance), are saying “this speculation is completely over the top”. If FAO does not seem to be mentioning that…
And with regards to The Economist: I got a booklet with its subscription. I was browsing through it and I found quite some strange measurements about Venezuela. Venezuela is probably one of the most lying countries now on Earth. That is why they don’t even take part in international evaluation programmes as the PISA programme for schools or the Unesco tests or IEA. So: hm…
According to data here: http://www.fagro.edu.uy/~suinos/jornadas/ixe/Conferencias%20pdf%20ixencuentro/Nieves%20-%20Potencial%20y%20perspectivas%20de%20la%20cunicultura%20en%20Venezuela%20y%20Latinoamerica.pdf (There’s some of that $10 million Hugo donated here I’m sure)
Each female is capable of producing 72kg. of meat per year. For 481,000 TONS or 481,000,000 KG of meat to be produced means that there were 6,680,555 and a half rabbit mothers on our national soil in the year 2008.
According to this: http://www.scielo.org.ve/scielo.php?pid=S0798-22592006000200006&script=sci_arttext
The average farm holds 80 mothers (at least the ones in the study). Therefore there should be 83,507 farms out there making bunnies.
Even if you allow that all farms are intensive/industrial in scale, farms that average 300 mothers, you would still need to have 22,000 + farms in Venezuela that raise rabbits.
I’m kinda doubting there are 22,000 rabbit farms out there.
Perhaps the birth rate among Venezuelan rabbits is higher. Venezuelan have one of the highest birth rates in South America, only after Bolivia, which is not so densely populated, and Paraguay (the same).
The figures are from Venezuelan farms
Holy guacamole! That doesn’t make sense at all.
Why have we not heard of this great Bolivarian success on Alo Presedente? Perhaps those involved are afraid that they will be ex-propreated like all other businesses in Venezuela. I am imaging that the great Hato’s of the Llanos have now been reduced to herding Rabbits! I have heard no Musica Llanara making reference to rabbits or that there is a new Coleo (the national sport of Venezuela)
involving rabbits and it is hard to imagine girls getting excited over the champion rabbit flipper!
To be serious, my French Canadian Grandfather raised rabbits along with chickens and pigs. This is the Camposino lifestyle. Rabbits are very efficient land use especialy in the tropics with lots of grass all year. I think whoever made the numbers was guessing as most production would be consumed on the farm or sold at the local barrio market. As far as the Economist goes, I will wait till they publish their numbers Monkey meat to decide on their accuracy.
Another thought: Maybe we also have many magicians!
They still use rabbits, don’t they?
After 2012, we’re going to need all of those!
My second guess is that they are mistakenly counting acures for rabbits…