Honey, milk and cheese help heal wounds in Colombia

The shadows of war have not stopped José de Jesús Ibáñez, a farmer from the municipality of Carmen de Bolívar, located on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, who has suffered the ravages of the armed conflict.

The man with the fixed gaze and white hair, who is now 62 years old, learned about raising and caring for bees since he was just 14. It was the age at which he had to separate from his parents, victims of forced displacement, to live with one of his uncles in a nearby town, about 40 kilometers from the Roma village, where he grew up.

“My dad had to leave there with my brothers.. I went with an uncle who was already involved in beekeeping. He told me to stay and gave me my first hive. From that moment on, I began a permanent relationship with bees and everything related to the environment,” she told UN News from the same area she had to flee almost five decades ago.

El Carmen de Bolívar is the largest municipality in the Montes de María, a subregion of 6.4 square kilometers with agricultural and livestock potential in the north of the country, between the departments of Bolívar and Sucre, which has been at the center of disputes between illegal armed groups for control of land and drug trafficking.

More than forty massacres

According to the National Center for Historical Memory, between 1999 and 2001 alone, paramilitary groups committed 42 massacres that left 354 people dead in that subregion, including one of the most atrocious in the history of violence in Colombia: the El Salado massacre in which 60 people were killed between February 16 and 21, 2000.

It is also, one of the areas of the country with the most displaced civilians“As soon as a bomb or machine gun sounded, we would run out to seek shelter in the village,” Ibáñez recalls.

José de Jesús Ibáñez lost the uncle who helped raise him and five other family members murdered at the hands of outlaw groups, but the teachings he received as a child stayed with him for the rest of his life. After returning to his path, he continued betting on beekeeping.

As an entrepreneur from the region, he was one of the 3,560 people who participated in the project. Territorial transformation, resilience and sustainabilityan initiative of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency with the technical cooperation of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to offer comprehensive support to families who are victims of the armed conflict.

The support included financial support with training to improve the productive processes and commercial organization of farmers for economic reactivation, as well as the construction of community impact works, such as dairy product transformation plants and points of sale for agroecological products, among others. .

A comprehensive bet

Beatriz Arismendi, project coordinator, explains that it was a comprehensive effort to transform the territory.

“That meant having a job on several fronts. The organizational process for local entrepreneurs to become legally established, to be registered in order to be able to enter into commercial agreements, approaches to successful experiences and the incorporation of good practices with a focus on gender and environmental protection,” he details.

The formation of nodes, grouped according to the proximity of the producers or the activity they carried out, also allowed the reconstruction of the social fabric.

“Families that did not know each other or that had mutual distrust due to the conflict are now fully integrated, working in the community.. They have an established organization and several ventures: beekeeping, processing of dairy products, sustainable livestock farming, dressmaking, traditional products,” adds Arismendi.

The initiative also promoted cultivation for self-consumption adding the production of more than 2.6 million tons of food and generating opportunities for food, economic and productive self-sufficiency.

Ibáñez, the beekeeper, highlights the efforts that have been made to ensure solidity and sustainability in the territories.

“It is not that they give you money to work, but rather that they teach you how to manage that money. Transformation always occurs to enrich knowledge. The support allowed us to improve the quality of life of many families,” he emphasizes.

Ana Herrera from the Mujeres Tejiendo El Paraíso clothing center, an initiative built with the empowerment of women and through a reconciliation process in the territory.

Technology as a tool

Products such as honey, avocados and local sweets are now not only sold locally, but through a mobile application developed by José Félix Ibáñez, a young systems engineer, son of José de Jesús Ibáñez, so that families in the Roma sidewalk will boost their businesses.

“We develop a platform to show the traceability of products, from harvest to marketing. This way, you could see how honey was produced, and this led to the product being sold nationwide,” Ibáñez Jr. points out.

“Today, for example, those who produce honey and cheese sell their products to large companies. This is an indicator that the production process has matured significantly to achieve the quality that a company like that can demand,” emphasizes Arismendi, the project coordinator.

The initiative of the Swedish embassy together with FAO lasted for nearly four years, from 2020 to the present. It was developed with targeted areas in the departments of Córdoba, Bolívar, Nariño and Putumayo.

“We have faced situations of violence, but the power of wanting to help people has been greater,” points out Ibáñez, the man who represents the resilience of communities, which, like bees, have shown that together they are stronger.