I was able to witness what this means in practice as part of two days of fieldtrips linked to the conference. Traveling by bus about 5 hours outside of Bogotá in to the countryside, we arrived at a 156 hectare farm, complete with villa and swimming pool. While the estate looked like something out of a scene from ‘Narcos’ (the popular Netflix show about the notorious Colombian druglord, Pablo Escobar), we were greeted instead by members of a peasant cooperative. As they prepared lunch for us, it was explained by a representative of the SAE, the Special Assetholding Agency of the Colombian government, that the property and land had belonged to a former narcotraficante but had been seized by the state under a special policy known as ‘Land for Peace’ which sees confiscated assets redistributed to victims of the armed conflict, women, young people, and landless groups who have been signatories of the peace agreement. Last year, SAE distributed 40,000 hectares to cooperatives under this policy.
The following day, we were shuttled high up to over 3000 metres to visit the Peasant Reserve Zone of Venecia in the Sumapaz highlands. Here, around 600 peasants have formed an association known as “Agua Campesina” (Peasant Waters) partly in tribute to the 270 waterfalls that cover the approx. 8,500 hectare reserve that was officially recognised by the government in December.[1] Growing amongst other things, tree tomatoes (tamarillo), blackberries, lettuce, cape gooseberry, corn, peas, avocado and managing a range of livestock (cows, goats, sheep, pigs and poultry), the Association has formulated a Sustainable Development Plan to encourage environmental conservation, schooling, road infrastructure, food production, agroecology and peasant cultural life. It is now seeking further support to put this Plan into action.
Significant challenges remain around access to credit, technical assistance, markets and basic public amenities such as water, housing and schooling that can increase the economic sustainability for those living on newly redistributed lands. More broadly, the need to build broader society wide alliances and between society and sympathetic elements of the state to maintain support for the land reform agenda will be important in the face of potential shifts in electoral politics, counter-movements, and the backlash by big capital interests.