Cabudare Kids

Why did the bread run out?

The corner bakery and a price nobody could keep. A true story about wheat, dollars and bread.

Hi! I'm Cardi. This is Luisa, who lives in Cabudare.
Every morning she buys bread at the corner bakery. The baker, Mr. Tomás, starts baking very early.
Bread is made with flour, and flour is made with wheat.
The wheat for that flour was bought in other countries. And to buy from abroad, you need dollars.
Venezuela gets dollars by selling oil. When the price of oil dropped, far fewer dollars came in.
Also, to buy dollars you had to ask the government for permission. Back in 2014, that permission sometimes took months.
So less and less wheat arrived. In 2017, bakers said only a quarter of the wheat that was needed arrived.
One baker in Caracas needed 150 sacks of flour a week. One week he got only 26.
The government also set the price of bread. The bakers said that price was lower than what it cost to make it.
Imagine spending 3 coins to make a loaf and having to sell it for 2. Every loaf makes you lose!
To stay open, some bakers used some of the flour for pizzas and sweets. Those they could sell at their own price.
The government said they used the flour for sweets to earn more. The bakers said there wasn't enough flour for everything.
What questions would you ask each side to find out who is right?
The lines were long. At that bakery in Caracas, people waited two hours. Each person could take only two loaves.
In 40 minutes, all the bread was gone.
Back in 2014, when flour ran short, some bakeries shared the little they had with others.
Starting in 2019, it became easier to bring in flour from abroad, and the government stopped handing it out.
Little by little, some bakeries filled up again with baguettes, sweet bread and cakes. Others had already closed.
And Mr. Tomás still bakes every morning. Luisa's corner smells of bread again!
What did you learn?
- The wheat for bread came from other countries, and buying it took dollars.
- If the set price is lower than what something costs to make, less of it gets made.
- Before deciding who is right, it helps to listen to every side.
This really happened
This is where we checked every fact in the story:
1. 1.NPR (John Otis) / KVPR, Venezuela's Bread Wars: With Food Scarce, Government Accuses Bakers Of Hoarding, April 7, 2017.
2. 2.U.S. Department of Agriculture (Foreign Agricultural Service, Caracas), Wheat Flour Shortages Creates US Export Opportunity (GAIN Report VE1401), January 17, 2014.
3. 3.Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (A. M. Santacreu and H. Zhu), How Can Venezuela Address Its Hyperinflation?, January 18, 2018.
4. 4.Reuters (Mayela Armas), Longtime Caracas bakeries enjoy sweet benefits of dollarization, December 1, 2022.
For grown-ups: notes and links to sources
For grown-ups: Luisa and Mr. Tomás are made up; the facts are not. In 2017, NPR reported that price-controlled bread was sold at a loss, for about 20 U.S. cents, and that, according to the bakers' federation, about 25% of the wheat needed was being imported. Authorities accused bakers of hoarding flour, seized several bakeries and arrested their owners. In 2022, according to Reuters, the cheapest bread cost $1 and the minimum wage was equivalent to about $12 a month.

The story

What did you learn?

This really happened