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Cecilia López carries on her shoulders the mission of paying off a historical debt that the State has with the Colombian countryside: agrarian reform. In four years, the new Minister of Agriculture of the country’s first leftist government must consolidate territorial peace to achieve Total Peace, her flag. López is the architect of the agreement signed this weekend between the Government and the Colombian Livestock Federation (Fedegán) for the purchase of three million hectares from the union.
This is great news from a government that has only been in power for two months: the purchase at a fair price of three million hectares from the powerful ranchers’ union. A big step in the redistribution of land whose dispossession, concentration in a few hands and lack of productivity are the axes of the conflict that has lasted since the country has republican memory.
“Leave a mark on the country”
Cecilia López, the Minister of Agriculture, is behind the transformation of the Colombian countryside: “I feel that life is giving me the opportunity to leave a mark on the country, a mark accompanied by many people who would greatly change the face of this sector. rural so backward. I feel a historical responsibility”.
The agreement surprises, seeing one of the signing parties: José Félix Lafaurie; the president of Fedegán, staunch enemy of the peace signed with the FARC and today committed to the leftist government of Gustavo Petro in the materialization of territorial peace to achieve a Total Peace.
“This is a government of dialogue and agreement, and consequently, we have advanced very quickly: in less than a month we have reached a great agreement that will bring a lot of peace to the rural sector, and at the same time the possibility that the sector rural consolidate a middle class, which is capable of responding to the challenges of a country that must necessarily be an agri-food power for the world”, said Lafaurie.
Total transparency and responsibility of the Government
The agrarian reform in Colombia, that great debt of the State with the countryside, began a little over a month ago with the titling of 681,000 hectares and the rental of another 125,000 to peasant organizations. The purchase of land, the third edge of the reform, sows fears in some sectors that doubt the productivity of the properties sold and their origin. There are those who even think that the sale of these lands can become a mechanism to legalize or finance dispossession.
Faced with these doubts, Cecilia López responds that the land purchase process will be carried out with watermark to guarantee its total transparency: “A very serious legal review is going to be carried out. We already have lawyers offering their support to look at the history of these lands. There is a clear mandate of the law, where one cannot buy land because he ends up in jail if that land has not been acquired in a transparent manner. Once it is acquired, it goes to UPRA, which is our planning unit, where it is known if that land is productive. Once it is known whether that land is productive or not, work is done to determine a minimum or maximum price and then it is applied in specific areas of the multipurpose cadastre. The set of that will give us the commercial value at which the land will be purchased, ”she details.
“But”, he underlines, “that does not go alone, that goes to groups of people who will have the support of the Rural Development Agency and that implies an effort in terms of credit, technical assistance, probably water. Some areas of the country continue to have energy problems, we need to ensure that they have energy… It is a very complex production package that involves many government institutions. That is why some operational adjustments were made to the initial offer, because it is the Government that has the responsibility that everything goes well and is the one that has the information.”
“The land is only a means”
The Government promised to implement and deepen the Final Peace Agreement, negotiated with the former FARC guerrilla, and mainly, point 1 of said agreement: “Towards a New Colombian Countryside: Comprehensive Rural Reform.”
“The land is only a medium. The goal is the reincorporation of these sectors into the country’s production chain, but also peace: that will end in more or less one million hectares delivered this year. That is already an immense effort compared to the seven million that the agreement says. Is there something that the previous government already delivered? Nothing, I think. But hey, we have to add. We have six years to fulfill, they were 12 and six have already passed. Six are missing, four of this government and I hope that we do it so well that the next government does not end this strategy, but rather continues it”, concludes Cecilia López.
The fulfillment and verification of the direct land purchase agreement for the construction of the Comprehensive Rural Reform will be supported by the World Bank and the United Nations Organization Mission in Colombia.
