Venezuela went from being a net exporter of rice to a net importer of rice

See Who’d a-thunk it? by Mark J. Perry of "Carpe Diem."

"About two weeks ago, Don Boudreaux started a great new series of posts on the Cafe Hayek blog with the theme “Who’d a-Thunk It?”, here’s a link to the inaugural post in that series. Don has graciously agreed to allow me to post items on CD under that same theme, so here’s my first one: Under Venezuela’s late president and vocal critic of the market economy, Hugo Chavez’s socialist economic policies, which included nationalizing private farm land, redistribution of land, and government price controls on agricultural products, Venezuela went from being a net exporter of rice to a net importer of rice — with many of its imports coming from… the “imperialist USA,” a term Chavez frequently used to describe America."