steel mill to vegetable patch

Workers at Venezuelan steelmaker Sidor are planting sunflowers and vegetables on company premises to ease a national food deficit as steel output has almost ground to a halt nine years after the company was taken over by the government.
The company says the crops are meant to boost food supply in Venezuela, which suffers from chronic Soviet-style product shortages as a result of an unraveling socialist economic system that has been exacerbated by low oil prices.
Late socialist leader Hugo Chavez nationalized Sidor in 2008. Since then, chronic labor disputes and deterioration of installations have decimated production and left a swollen payroll of employees twiddling their thumbs on the job.