President Hugo Chavez couldn't persuade city folks to move to the sparsely populated interior to help Venezuela feed itself. So he's bringing farming to the city.

With help from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the populist ex-paratrooper who sold mangoes as a child hopes to give Caracas residents a green thumb -- as a way to fight poverty and malnutrition.

Despite the country's oil riches, more than half of its 24 million people live in poverty. According to the latest statistics available from the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, at least 5 percent of Venezuelan children under age 5 were undernourished in 2000.

Most Venezuelans make the minimum wage of $120 a month. Even if two parents work, their pay does not approach the $585 that the average family of five needs for a basic living.

Chavez is urging shantytown residents to plant rooftop gardens. And he has the army helping in a campaign to turn abandoned land into community gardens.

At one lot in downtown Caracas recently, soldiers hauled wheelbarrows of dark soil and Cuban agriculture experts from the FAO reviewed plans while volunteers -- many of whom had never seen a farm -- planted vegetables.

"We are using intensive farming with high rotation [of crops] all year long," said a Cuban adviser, Mirium Carrion. "If we don't get at least five or six harvests a year, it really isn't feasible."

Flowers, green peppers, beets and even medicinal plants such as aloe have been planted on a 1.3-acre plot next to a Hilton hotel.

"Everything that is planted and harvested here will be sold to the public," said Amado Perdigon, an agronomic engineer. "Volunteers will share in the profits and a portion will be put back into the program to keep it going."

Critics say the campaign means well, but they argue it is based on projects that have failed in communist countries and say the government would do more to alleviate food shortages if it helped the private business sector.

Chavez says his government aims to get vegetables planted this year on more than 2,470 acres in Caracas and surrounding areas, including city slums. "We are planting a new life for Venezuela," he proclaimed recently.

The government will spend $2 million for the projects in Caracas, Deputy Agriculture Minister Ricaurte Leonett said.

Chavez first tried to persuade city people to become farmers after mudslides and flash floods killed 15,000 Venezuelans and left tens of thousands homeless near the capital. Most of the homeless refused to budge, staying with relatives or rebuilding precarious shanties.

The city farm project comes as Venezuela is suffering one of its worst recessions in decades.

A two-month general strike that ended in February and a government freeze on spending U.S. dollars have worsened food shortages.

The failed strike, called by labor and business groups to demand Chavez's resignation, cost Venezuela an estimated $6 billion in lost production.

The stoppage also led the government to impose currency exchange controls to stem a slide in foreign currency reserves. Since January, not one dollar has been granted to food importers in a country that imports 60 percent of its food.

Besides encouraging city farming, the government plans to sell 112,000 tons of food each month to the poor at bargain prices. The program, with soldiers distributing and selling the food, will cost the government $70 million a month, Chavez said.

Critics argue that the cost will outweigh the benefits while further hurting the struggling private sector.

Michael Shifter, an analyst at Inter-American Dialogue, a public policy group in Washington, said the project is well intentioned but based on failed models in Cuba and other communist countries.

"There aren't many success stories regarding similar efforts," Shifter said. "This goes against what many see as the proper role for the military. It helps him [Chavez] consolidate power while leaving private enterprise out."

The army also is giving urban farmers old shipping pallets and trash bags to build growing containers.

In the capital's Tamarindo slum, the crates are sprouting with lettuce, eggplant, tomatoes and broccoli. They are on balconies and rooftops in the labyrinth of red-brick shanties clinging to hillsides.

"I don't know how much food it will provide," Eloy Guerrero, 53, a carpenter who supports a family of six, said of his garden. "But it's something for my family during hard times."

President Hugo Chavez inaugurated a farm in downtown Caracas on March 31. Venezuela's government aims to plant vegetables this year on more than 2,470 acres in and around the capital. Jeannette Gonzalez learns to grow plants in crates at a military base in Caracas. The U.N. agriculture agency is helping Venezuela with the urban farming program.