VENEZUELAN President Nicolas Maduro welcomed a group of farm workers at Miraflores Palace yesterday, calling their 21-day march “necessary to awake the country’s national consciousness.”

The campesinos started their march on July 12, travelling more than 250 miles from Portuguesa state capital Guanare to the nation’s capital Caracas in a bid to make their voices heard and assert their rights.

They represented a number of farm and land workers’ collectives that have come together as the Platform of Peasant Struggles. They presented a number of demands and proposals for agrarian reform.

The workers produce 70 per cent of Venezuela’s food supply, but they complained of a lack of support, coupled with abuse from corporations and an unfair distribution of land.

Mr Maduro said: “This march was necessary to awake the national consciousness of what’s happening deep inside Venezuela and lift the national struggle.

“If the government doesn’t reach the depths of the people, the depths of the people have to reach their government to channel its vision and connect it in one action and strength.”

He promised concrete actions on the demands of the campesinos and vowed to work with them to find solutions to the problems they have presented regarding agrarian policy.

The Bolivarian leader stressed the need for further land reforms to build on those introduced by former president Hugo Chavez and the current government.

“The struggle for land has been going on for 500 years, since our ancestors were stripped of their lands. What did the European colonial empires come for? To take away land, rivers and seas from us,” he said.

Mr Maduro also promised an immediate review of the cases of jailed campesinos.