What Food Costs in Venezuela: Eggs $150 a Dozen, Dry Milk $100 a Pound

venezuela_food_pricesBy Daisy Luther

Now, those who are having difficulty finding food in Venezuela have another problem: being able to afford it.  Food costs in Venezuela have soared so high, they’re practically extraterrestrial. Those who didn’t stock up on emergency food  back before the government there made it illegal are now probably fervently wishing they had.

Here’s a crash course on hyperinflation.

Hyperinflation is when prices increase to ridiculous amounts very quickly, and it usually happens when a country’s currency becomes worthless due to economic collapse or deficit spending, after the government prints more money that is backed by nothing. Hyperinflation nearly ruined Zimbabwe after the government unrestrainedly printed money to fight a war.  It reached a staggering 2.2 million percent increase.  The most famous case of hyperinflation occurred in the Weimar Republic of Germany in 1922-1923. In these cases, hyperinflation reached  1,000,000,000,000 to 1.  (source)

Let me repeat one key point: Hyperinflation occurs due to economic collapse and when the government prints too much worthless money.  Sound familiar? *cough*quantitative easing*cough*

The food costs in Venezuela have reached hyperinflation levels.

The IMF has predicted that inflation in Venezuela will reach 720% this year, while other experts set that number at 1200%.  The drop in oil prices is partly to blame, as is the irresponsible spending of a socialist government.

An article in the LA Times sheds some very personal light on the situation there. A reporter interviewed a woman named Maria, a single mother who works as an accounting assistant for the government.

Her monthly pay, including a food allowance, is 27,000 bolivars.

That’s $2,700 a month at the official exchange rate of 10 bolivars to the dollar. But Venezuelans have so little faith in their currency — or the government’s ability to fix the country’s deepening economic crisis — that a dollar can fetch upward of 1,000 bolivars on the black market.  At that rate, Linares earns just $27 a month.

Maria told the reporter that her family subsists on eggs, cassava, cornmeal, and powdered milk.  She said they hadn’t eaten chicken since December.

She lines up overnight to get to shop in the government-regulated grocery store, but often, by the time she gets in, they are sold out. Then she has to buy her food on the black market.  The last time she managed to purchase food at one government store was 3 months ago.

The price of eggs at the store is the equivalent of $45 USD. The price that Maria has to pay to the illegal street vendors is…are you sitting down? $150 per dozen. One hundred fifty dollars. For twelve eggs.

She pays about $20 per pound for cassava and $75-100 per pound for dry milk. Recently, the price of corn flour rose from 95 cents a pound to $9.50 per pound.

One source disagrees vehemently with the contents of the LA Times article.

Telesur disputes the claim that eggs cost $150, stating, “International media outlets are continuing to misreport the economic crisis in Venezuela and the effect of high inflation on the cost of living.”

But, as always, you have to consider the source. Telesur is an English-speaking news source, created to offer a “Latin-American perspective” on world events. But according to the International Business Times, the “news” you’re getting comes straight from the government party line.

The new initiative, supported by President Nicolás Maduro’s administration and touting a leftist, social-oriented message, brings the TeleSUR network into the same ranks as Al-Jazeera English, China Central Television, Russia Today and France 24 as a government-funded effort to produce English-language news from non-English-speaking countries.

Again…sound familiar?  And I’m not just talking about that scene in The Interview when the dorky news guy discovers that even though it appears that there is food in the grocery stores, it’s all fake food made of plaster.


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Oh…they’re also out of beer.

If running out of food and toilet paper wasn’t bad enough, the country is also just about out of beer. According to CEO Lorenzo Mendoza, the country’s largest brewery and private food company, Empresas Polar, is no longer allowed to import barley to make beer due to President Maduro’s policy that closed the door on imports.

Speaking of Maduro, he seems to come up with more bizarre accusations every day about the reason the country is in so much trouble. (SPOILER: In none of his theories is the fault his own, nor does any of the blame get cast upon Socialist policies.)  Here’s the latest:

But in a bizarre twist, President Nicolás Maduro is trying to pin the crisis on Polar. Government TV spots claim — without evidence — that the company is deliberately scaling back food production and hiding inventories to sabotage the economy.

In a February speech, Maduro called Polar’s Mendoza “a thief and a traitor,” saying, “If you can’t run your company, turn it over to the people and they will run it.”

Ah, yes, even now, Maduro believes in Socialism over private enterprise.

Do you really think the US is safe from this kind of economic disaster?

There are certainly quite a few similarities between the route Venezuela took to get to this point and the road we’re on right now. It isn’t far-fetched to see how easily it could happen to us. After all, as recently as 1978, Venezuela was one of the 20 wealthiest countries on the planet.  Most likely, they didn’t see this coming either. Most likely, they felt complacent and smug in their abundance, just like we do here in America.

I can’t stress more fervently how vital it is that you store emergency food and supplies. Hopefully, the situation never reaches the depths that we’re seeing in Venezuela.  But if it did, how long would you be able to hold on before you were standing in those long lines, only to have the door slammed shut just before you got in the store because they had sold out?

For further reference, here are the supplies that they are out of in Venezuela. This can help you create your own list of necessary preps.

There’s no time to waste as our government recklessly prints money and becomes increasingly restrictive of our ability to be self-sufficient. What you see in the news from Venezuela could be happening in our streets here in America. You’ll want to be ready.

Please feel free to share any information from this site in part or in full, leaving all links intact, giving credit to the author and including a link to this website and the following bio. Daisy Luther lives on a small organic homestead in Northern California.  She is the author of The Organic Canner,  The Pantry Primer: A Prepper’s Guide to Whole Food on a Half-Price Budget, and The Prepper’s Water Survival Guide: Harvest, Treat, and Store Your Most Vital Resource. On her website, The Organic Prepper, Daisy uses her background in alternative journalism to provide a unique perspective on health and preparedness, and offers a path of rational anarchy against a system that will leave us broke, unhealthy, and enslaved if we comply.  Daisy’s articles are widely republished throughout alternative media. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest,  and Twitter.


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10 Comments on "What Food Costs in Venezuela: Eggs $150 a Dozen, Dry Milk $100 a Pound"

  1. Propagandist scaremongery at it’s most banal – YAWN!!!!!!!!!

    • people are genuinely suffering there. Even if you’re not convinced that the US is scheduled for a similar event —- you COULD see, I hope, if you use both brain cells, that the people there will not stay there. They will flee — to anyplace better– including the US of A. Thus, this WILL impact us. & that includes you, O yawning one with no heart.

  2. Try this for truth NOT propaganda lies… But the article uses wrong exchange rate for the example. In Venezuela,
    companies that import basic goods pay an exchange rate of 10 bolivars
    per dollar—a subsidy meant to encourage a steady supply for those
    goods—but not regular Venezuelans. That woman in Caracas, by contrast,
    would receive 520 bolivars for every U.S. dollar she exchanges, which
    means that for her a dozen eggs would cost less than US$3.
    If you don’t understand, don’t just repeat what LA Times prints.

    • Chezleigh Honolulu | June 2, 2016 at 11:50 am |

      she is paid in Bolivars, not dollars. She cannot get dollars, except by buying them at the inflated black market rates, 520/ USD according to you. 27, 000 bolivars x USD/520= $ 52 US monthly salary as exchanged for dollars, if she could get them at 520/USD.

  3. In every fruit there is UNLIMITED reproduction possibility – so, just learn on Youtube how to germinate your tomato, avocado, fruit…seeds and PLANT, PLANT all over the world in a guerrilla way!
    Let us turn our planet into a FREE garden where no famine could be ! In a fREE garden no theft is possible! No crime is needed. Society could heel.

    • true – but hybrid seeds are not reliable. They might sprout, or they might be sterile– they might produce what they were, or one of their parents. Please plant, and stock up on, “heirloom” varieties.

  4. Maybe it’s time for people there to immigrate to another place…muslims are doing it why not these people? And let them keep their $150 eggs!

  5. Sounds like it might be worth it to move there. Although it can not be as cool a Colorado. Move to Colorado and imbibe for the health and relaxation of it

  6. Basically, they elected a Bernie Sanders to lead their (then) prosperous country.

  7. The Bush-CIA has done its coup number on Venezuela since prior to Chavez. Venezuela refused to turn its oil over to Bush representatives, thirty years ago, prior to a later and similar decision by Muamar Qadhaffi in Libya. The bans invoked by US “leadership” on Venezuela have resulted in its current state of deprivation. The use of “socialism” enabled Venezuela to hold out, rather than cause its collapse. The recent removal of the president of Brazil was another CIA coup, designed to interfere with the formation of an alternate to the US petro dollar.

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