By Patricia Lara Salive, CAMBIO, August 4, 2024
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
The Minister of Agriculture, Marta Carvajalino, in her first interview with the press, explains to Patricia Lara Salive the details, the difficulties, the achievements, and the challenges of agrarian reform, the flagship program of the Gustavo Petro administration.
In this first interview that the new Minister of Agriculture, Marta Carvajalino, has given to the press since she took office on July 2, she tells how she intends to “promote agrarian reform with the objective of achieving a productive countryside with social justice”, a task that President Petro assigned to her in the tweet in which he announced her appointment as Minister of Agriculture.
Marta Carvajalino, a lawyer for the National University, has a Master’s Degree in Law from that same University, specializing in constitutional law. She has 17 years of experience in work related to agricultural and environmental issues. Besides that, she was the Vice Minister for Rural Development in the current administration, a position that she resigned because of differences with the former Director of the National Land Agency.
CAMBIO: Minister, they say that when you were the Vice Minister for Rural Development, you had differences with the prior Director of the National Land Agency because of land purchase procedures, and that’s why you resigned as Vice Minister. What were those differences?
Marta Carvajalino: They weren’t just differences about administrative management. And it’s important to mention that the procedures for direct purchase of land parcels had been forgotten and marginalized by the government. The government stopped buying land and was dedicated to developing a procedure for formalizing land titles. That’s very important, but it doesn’t modify the inequitable structure of land tenancy in Colombia. So there was no strong agency framework for the purchasing process, and there were different agency setups. All of those differences have been resolved, and now we have a National Land Agency with a more robust team that is implementing the purchasing process according to Statute 160 and strengthening the voluntary mechanism in the National Development Plan statute.
CAMBIO: Minister, President Petro has committed himself to obtaining a million and a half hectares out of the three million that were agreed on in the Peace Agreement to provide a fund for the purpose of giving land to campesinos. He’s now going to be in power for two years and nobody can doubt his political will to carry out agrarian reform. But we are in the middle of his term and agrarian reform has not taken off at all.
M.C.: The first thing that has to be said is that we have an institutional framework that has been in the process of deconstruction for the last 30 years, so now we have a lot of weaknesses in accomplishing the purpose of agrarian reform. Part of what this administration has done is to strengthen the institutional framework for implementing systems for that reform, starting with that idea of a national agreement that included the purchase of parcels of land from owners who put them up for sale voluntarily.
CAMBIO: But the Court rejected that.
M.C.: No, that’s not what the Court rejected. The system of voluntary sales of land for immediate acquisition is a tool that remains in Article 61 of the National Development Plan, and what it establishes, basically, is that it’s not the government that’s trying to buy land immediately; rather, it’s the owner who approaches the government sell a piece of land that he/she wants to sell. That’s now working for us, and it has some difficulties that I’m going to tell you about. What the Court rejected is the paragraph of the Article allowing that decisions about procedures for the recovery of unproductive lands, for settling boundaries with property belonging to the State, for agricultural eminent domain, and whether procedures for clarification can be resolved in an administrative setting. That implies that the procedures now being used to recover wastelands have to go to a court, which is much more complicated. The Land Fund, which contains those three million hectares that were agreed on in the Final Agreement, provides for various sources, and this administration has been making progress with that.
CAMBIO: How many hectares does the Fund contain now?
M. C.: A total of 185,000 hectares have been acquired under this administration and are in the formal purchase process. They are destined for ethnic groups and campesino communities. Nearly 100,000 of them will be for that last segment of the population that has no land recitals at all under Statute 110.
CAMBIO: And besides those 185,000 hectares, how many more are there in the Land Fund?
M. C. The Land Fund is nourished by those parcels that we’re buying and by the procedures for recovery of improperly occupied wasteland and also by eminent domain procedures. Right now, we’re close to getting some 100,000 hectares from some legal procedures that hadn’t been resolved and that this administration did resolve. That allows those properties to become part of the Fund. So right now, there are 285,000 hectares in the Land Fund, more than 5,000 hectares in the process of being turned over, as well as some other very small parcels of land that have not been used for production, but are the property of the State and ought to be part of the National Land Fund. We are talking about 24,000 more hectares. Besides that, we have identified some 100,000 hectares from legal proceedings that have been decided and ought to be returned to people that were evicted illegally or were victims of violence and had to abandon their property.
CAMBIO: That totals 415,000 hectares.
M. C.: It does.
CAMBIO: 1,055,000 are lacking. Where are you going to get them?
M. C.: To do that, we’re going to have to change some systems in the agrarian reform. If our main goal is immediate acquisition of parcels of land, we have to facilitate that process. What’s gumming up the works right now? First, the way in which the parcels are laid out. I mean, for the properties to be added to this great national agreement for the modification of the countryside and for agrarian reform, when owners voluntarily put their property up for sale, we can concentrate land purchases in what we have called “the nuclei” of agrarian reform. Which is the land that this administration is interested in buying? The highly concentrated properties that aren’t producing what they ought to be producing, and those lands that are highly concentrated and are producing, but not producing efficiently. And the highly concentrated parcels that are producing inefficiently are concentrated in Córdoba, Sucre, and Magdalena Medio. There’s where we need to strengthen the process of governance and we need the national agreement to buy those parcels that are largely dedicated to extensive cattle ranching and could be modified to more sustainable cattle raising, plus parcels could be put at the disposition of the government for food production. To do that, we have designed a special program of equipping parcels, as specified in Decree 1623 of 2023, that will allow us to create a process that articulated with the local government to put purchase and production into the hands of the campesino economy.
But we also have to facilitate the agrarian legal proceedings that the Court has left a little bit, you might say, in limbo. Faced with the nonexistence of agrarian courts and judges, we will have to take some steps. The legislature has acted to create an agrarian jurisdiction, and we have a statutory law for an agrarian jurisdiction, and it’s necessary that its courts and judges start functioning. That implies that the Congress also must debate the ordinary bill that was not debated in the last session. Why? To have procedures and some clearly-stated authority so that these cases that are now being submitted, and ought to arrive at a tribunal, will arrive there. But we also want to call for a legislative debate about the cases like those for recovery of wasteland that was illegally occupied, and like the boundary dispute cases, so that they reach an administrative agency, because they are a part of administration of the land.
CAMBIO: And if the Congress, for reason X, doesn’t do the job and study that in this session……..?
M. C.: We have been working on an institutional bonding at the National Agrarian Reform System, as well as with strengthening the National Land Agency and the Rural Development Agency with trained teams to carry out action plans to assure implementation of the procedures. Now we are pushing the process of the biggest land purchase that this country has ever seen, and we are hoping to acquire—if we can get the necessary funding—at least 300,000 hectares in the coming year. But we also have some other strategy ideas. This, for example, is the opposite strategy for the Amazonian arc and the stabilization of campesino territories and the food production territories that will be converted for slowing the expansion of the agricultural frontier that borders the Amazon biome. And there we are making some progress. This administration has declared ten campesino reserves.
CAMBIO: Well then, what halted the land purchase agreement with Fedegan?
M. C.: It’s making progress. We have made some adjustments to the system, because I have to say that now we need to change the way we are presenting the voluntary sale of land. It was being presented as if the government was looking for any kind of land, and we aren’t looking for just any kind of land. We are trying to reform the unequal structure of tenancy in land in Colombia. To do that, the parcels that we’re buying are those that are concentrated and not those that are already producing. We want to buy land that isn’t producing now, in order to put it into production, and to do that there has to be agreement in general. So, when we invite the owners to sell, we decide which owners we want to talk to about selling their property. We’re making that adjustment with Fedegan, and there we have designed something that’s very interesting: the Sustainable Cattle Ranching Mission for Agrarian Reform. With that, for the very large owners that have, for example 2,000 to 10,000 hectares and that want to sell half of their ranch or a little more, we created financing incentives for them to develop, on the remaining half of the ranch, sustaining cattle raising that allows their economic activity to be more efficient and to put their property at the disposal of the agrarian reform. We are close to relaunching that strategy with Fedegan, so that the big agreement that comes from the will to transform the countryside can be translated effectively into what we actually need. And we aren’t buying everything that they offer to sell, but rather just what the agrarian reform needs. And that’s a very important message so that the alliance with Fedegan can materialize.
CAMBIO: That sounds wonderful. But what happened to those 450,000 hectares? Who has those properties right now?
M. C.: Those properties are in the hands of campesino agriculture. We have already turned 98,000 hectares over to organizations and associations within the provisional systems that the agrarian regulations foresaw, and we are implementing an action plan to develop productive projects, not parcel-by-parcel, but regional, with the beneficiaries of agricultural reform. That’s an adjustment that’s being made throughout this year and we hope that it will have results very soon.
CAMBIO: Are you saying that the owners aren’t going to be campesinos, but campesino associations?
M. C.: That will depend on the circumstances in the countryside. In some farms that we’ve turned over, there is a very strong association that is able to administer the benefits collectively. In other cases there is a more individual relationship in the land tenancy. Regardless of the kind of tenancy relationship, we do need to have associative production. Because if we believe that campesino agriculture can generate profits, and if we want to put this wealth in the hands of the campesinos, we need to have a scale that is associative and is joined to production, to transformation, and to marketing in a scheme where the government will have to keep adjusting the Agrarian Reform.
CAMBIO: Twenty years ago, Brazil was a country without any agricultural progress and today it’s a power. In fact, soy is their principal source of foreign currency. Colombia has been totally backward, in spite of having all kinds of possibilities. What are you going to do to put this country in the place where it has to be from the technological point of view? I mean, what technologies are you going to import or what technical assistance from other countries will you get in order to emerge from agricultural underdevelopment?
M. C.: We’re working with Brazil to develop a process for reaching a pretty complete understanding, because, among other things, their agriculture grew in the hands of an agrarian reform. We’re also working to understand the role played by campesino agriculture within their total national production. Agrarian reform goes right along with the growth of the farming and livestock raising sector. The ones who are producing in the sector have economies of scale and capital, so they can produce. And they have to have government guarantees in order for that growth to continue. What we’re trying to do is to have agrarian reform redistribute the land that isn’t producing but that should be producing, and carry out, if you will, a dialog on production. We need to have the campesinos obtain productive land. And that requires everything that you’ve placed on the table. So, turning over the land for rural development requires public goods and services and tertiary roads, which are also in the Peace Agreement. Roads are not in the agriculture sector, but they do have to do with agrarian reform. And we have to speed up the areas of export and innovation. All of production transformation has to be a commitment to an agrarian reform that talks with the business owners. For example, the growth of the fruit growing sector is very important, but it requires transformation and thinking about the international market. That, finally, is an agreement with the one who now is producing on a land reform property and an administration that’s aiming to have all of the steps, from primary production to marketing on its wager on construction and national dialog. We need technological innovation, and that requires international cooperation and the cooperation of Colombia’s trade associations. This country has around fifteen million hectares that aren’t producing what they should be able to produce. They are being converted to a base for turning Colombia into a food production power. That’s what we’re trying to put on the table: guaranteeing the mechanisms between distribution of land, entering the production process, transformation, and marketing, where we have to make yes or yes the dialog with the collection of actors in the farming and cattle raising world so that we can strengthen the scale of production.
CAMBIO: Yes, but what is happening in this country and especially in this administration; they said they’re going to do things, but nothing happens. What is the Agriculture Ministry going to do to make all these fine things come true?
M. C.: I think there are three key messages: the first is that agrarian reform is the central axis of the administration’s program, with the understanding that this is a commitment to the modernization of the countryside. This administration’s task is to set up the bases so that the agrarian reform agreed upon in 1994 can be carried out.
CAMBIO: Those words recall Virgilio Barco’s rehabilitation plan, which was a marvel. But here we are starting over and there is no continuity. . .
M. C.: Besides having no continuity, what we had were decisions that went backward. In 1936 there was a commitment about land that was not necessarily redistributive, but was for regulating the farming and livestock raising sector. Next, around 1944, the reform was halted. In 1961, they went back to making an agrarian reform agreement with an absolute emphasis on redistribution. The big process of land acquisition in the initiative that was undertaken that year was powerful, but it was stopped in 1974. Then in 1994 they went back to making that agreement, and that wasn’t carried out either. And now, with the understanding that the war was fought over the land, we had to arrive at a Peace Agreement, which is an impulse to do what we said that we were going to do in 1994. And if in those scenarios we suggest that this is what this administration ought to do, that is, establish the foundations, perhaps more solid ones, so that agrarian reform doesn’t go backwards. And so we have to strengthen the actors in the countryside, and the trade associations, that have a role, but fundamentally the people that have been most excluded from agrarian reform, are the campesinos in Colombia. And why do I say that they’re the most excluded? Because when we agreed to do agrarian reform in 1994, our unmerciful war pushed it aside. And to do agrarian reform, I need that social area to be organized, solid, capable of receiving the land and making it productive. But we also have to build the alliances and the governance that that requires. If the land has been the cause of the conflict, the land has to be the search for peace. That’s why it’s so important to stress that this administration has set up a system for voluntary acquisitions of land, because it’s the possibility of connecting landowners with people who have no land.
CAMBIO: How is it that your predecessor couldn’t do that and you are going to be able to do it?
M. C.: What the administration wants to do in its second stage is to emphasize the growth in the farming and livestock raising business. That has to continue to be promoted, and now we have to take more steps so land redistribution can be reality. We need those agrarian reform committees that we were talking about in 1994 to be consolidated, because now it’s time for consensus. This agrarian reform consensus is taking place in the countryside and was predicted in the National Development Plan. It’s the effort of the Joint Commission on Campesino Affairs that’s in the National Development Plan and which we hope will be announced by the President this week. We have to strengthen dialog with all of the sectors, and perhaps this emphasis could make the difference in the implementation of the reform.
CAMBIO: But we could say, just to be clear, that the previous emphasis was on acquisition. . .
M. C.: The emphasis has always been on acquisition, but we had a sector that was generating guarantees for farm production and that has to keep on happening. We also have a very important emphasis on financing for the farming and livestock production sector and on accompaniment for the production chain, and now these areas of emphasis have to be translated into consensus with the campesinos in the countryside, based on this process of land acquisition and production in the campesino economy.
CAMBIO: But if, for example, I have a property and I want to sell it, what should I do, where should I call, whose office do I look for?
M. C.: The National Land Agency is about to launch a new mechanism. Before, anybody could offer to sell their land, but there’s going to be a system that will start functioning soon and will permit applications for more information, because, I insist, we don’t want to buy everything that’s offered for sale. We want to buy land that the agriculture regulations define as necessary for redistribution: land that’s highly concentrated and that isn’t producing what it should be producing. So, with that filter, now we can know whether what an owner wants to sell is really what we need. But with one additional element: we buy directly from the owner, not from intermediaries. That’s because some actors are trying to intermediate between the owners and the agency and that could make for a shady exchange. We want to set up a system where we can converse directly with the owner to confirm that what he/she is offering is what we need, and also that the owner can feel secure and confident in that the negotiations with the government are transparent.
CAMBIO: And how is the land titling process going?
M. C.: There is a mechanism for provisional delivery that includes that the people who are classified as subjects for agrarian reform can put a parcel into production while the process of formalization is being carried out, and they have to comply with some administrative obligations. Now we have 735,000 hectares in the formalization process for indigenous and campesino communities, and what that does is restructure the market for land in this country, and allow people occupying an ancestral property that’s never to be negotiated or transferred, or a campesino property that is susceptible to transfer, to enter the land market and to progress in the same manner as could a more secure tenancy.
CAMBIO: Are there 735,000 hectares in the process of formalization?
M. C.: They are formalized.
CAMBIO: Plus 450,000 that have been purchased or acquired in some manner. . .
M. C.: They aren’t added, because the Final Peace Agreement set two big goals for integrated rural reform: 3 million hectares for indigenous peoples and campesinos without land or with insufficient land, and the formalization of 7 million hectares.
CAMBIO: And for those 450,000 hectares, how many are already titled with their new owners?
M. C.: We have 98,000 actually delivered. There is already a relationship with land occupations protected by the government, and we have to promote the titling processes until they are signed up. We now have more than 15,000 hectares finally registered, but we still have the ones for the indigenous communities. How do you formalize and title effectively for the indigenous communities? I buy the land to expand the reservation, and I have to take it to the Board of Directors of the National Land Agency so that they can make an agreement and turn it over to the community.
CAMBIO: Why only 15,000 out of 450,000?
M. C.: Because we’ve been buying properties for two years and the purchasing process has to be very rigorous. So rigorous that we’ve had to make some internal adjustments and right now we are closing down the negotiations.
CAMBIO: But Minister, at that rate it will be 20 years before it’s done. . .
M. C.: No, that’s not what’s going to happen. We have an action plan that includes strengthening the teams at the Registries and Notaries Commission, so that the properties that are being turned over provisionally will move promptly into a definitive award.
CAMBIO: Those 15,000 hectares that have already been turned over, what condition are they in?
M. C.: All of them are in the hands of the people that are supposed to own them.
CAMBIO: And what has happened with those properties?
M. C.: We’re making an effort to be connected with those parcels. There are farms that were delivered directly that are producing without the government doing anything. That shows that there is an organized campesino movement that has the will to own land and has the capacity to produce.
CAMBIO: Minister, if I have a parcel that isn’t being exploited as it should be, and I want to do it right, who should I go to?
M. C.: One of the pushes that we’ve been making is offering funds by financing with a subsidized interest rate or an incentive to capitalization, so that producers can count on credit and can be free to work on their production schedules. One option is to go to the Agrarian Bank. Another is to seek technical assistance, which this administration has to strengthen.
CAMBIO: The people don’t know that.
M. C.: People are unfamiliar with farming and livestock raising policy. For 30 years we’ve been subjected to the process of privatization of public farming services. I’ll give you an example that we don’t talk much about: public service in upgrading land, irrigation, and drainage to prepare the soil for farming.
CAMBIO: Who will help me if I need irrigation and drainage?
M. C.: First of all, an entity in charge of large-scale development projects, which is the Rural Development Agency. What’s happened is that the small and mid-scale irrigation districts have almost all been left to private initiatives. But you ask me, who should I go to? When Incora (Colombia Institute for Agricultural Reform) existed, you would go to their office, but now you should go to the Development Office in the Rural Development Agency. They have some locations in several departments, or you could go to the National Land Agency.
CAMBIO: I notice that the Petro administration is trying to go back to what Alberto and Carlos Lleras did in agrarian reform. . .
M. C.: I think there is an implicit commitment that has not been accomplished in this country, and it’s the commitment to redistribute the land. And there may be elements that we have in common with that narrative; it requires a strong institutional framework. I can’t do agrarian reform or rural development with a weak institutional framework. And I need to strengthen the procedures for dialog with the social movement that wants to see agrarian reform.
CAMBIO: What is your main goal for making the land purchase policy function?
M. C.: With the National Land Agency, adjust the procedures and the vehicle for financing the purchases, besides being able to reach agreement with the owners so they make these lands we’ve been talking about available to agrarian reform. We also have to have some administrative measures that will allow us to speed up the purchasing process.
CAMBIO: And do you have an OK relationship with the new Director of the National Land Agency?
M. C.: If the Minister of Agriculture doesn’t have a good relationship with the Director of the National Land Agency, it’s not going to work.
CAMBIO: What was it that happened a few months ago?
M. C.: Well, I don’t know what to tell you, because I wasn’t the Minister. What I can tell you is that there has to be alignment with the sectors. I think we have achieved that here. We are aligned with the intentions of the National Land Agency to understand that this has to be staked out by the sector that has the protagonist role in doing the process directly, which is the National Land Agency. And we are establishing some mechanisms that will allow us not just to speed up the process, but also to guarantee transparency and effectiveness in purchasing.
CAMBIO: And what are you going to do to get over the problems there have been in awarding properties?
M. C.: We have an action plan, but I want to focus the awarding of properties in several ways. It’s one thing to award property that we have purchased. These properties go into the National Land Fund and have a system for administration. But we have a system for awarding properties that come from unproductive land and formalizing private property that are regulated by other systems. The idea is to strengthen some of the teams. For example, there are some that are tied to obtaining services, because the agency sites are very small. We have to strengthen those teams and think about restructuring those entities so that they can carry out the objectives of their mission. I insist: doing agrarian reform is not possible for an entity that is highly centralized and doesn’t have a robust presence, with decision-making authority, in the countryside
CAMBIO: What’s going to happen with the court decision that found some errors, formal ones, basically?
M. C.: With that decision, the situation is that now we don’t have an agrarian jurisdiction implemented, in spite of the fact that it’s already recognized in the constitutional legal system. And we don’t have the possibility, until we familiarize ourselves completely with what the Constitutional Court’s decision says, to decide exactly what to do. I will say right away that it’s a delicate situation, the recovery of unproductive properties that have been illegally occupied. Even though those properties are in the hands of people that ought not to have them, and should be put at the disposal of agrarian reform, now we don’t have the possibility of saying anything and neither do we have an agrarian jurisdiction. So we have made two calls. First to discuss agrarian jurisdiction so that we will be able to put our judges to work right away, so that, within the framework of their autonomy and independence, they can deal with agrarian conflicts. But also to return to the administration its faculty of administration, to make appropriate decisions about properties that belong to the nation, which belong to the National Land Fund and have a constitutional and legally specified assignment. And we are working on that legal and regulatory design.
CAMBIO: If President Petro achieves even half of what he has promised for agrarian reform, he would go down in history. When do you think we’re going to see the results of those promises?
M. C.: We are making the sectoral adjustments that that requires. I have to say that there is some certain progress, such as putting 100,000 hectares into the process of direct acquisition into the campesino economy. That’s something that has no precedent in Statute 160 of 1994, and we can say right now that it’s working. I think the country can expect to see those 100,000 hectares producing food very soon.
CAMBIO: And when will we see that production?
M. C. I think between this year and next year.
CAMBIO: And what are these 100,000 hectares going to produce?
M. C.: They’re already producing, many of them, eggplant, and yuca. That’s going to depend a lot on circumstances. For now, our goal is to decide right away what ought to be the line that can catapult agrarian reform into production this year. That depends on the international market, on the goals of agro-industrialization, and on the concurrence of the trade associations that have shown their willingness to take part in this agrarian reform.
CAMBIO: You decided that August would be Agrarian Reform Month. What’s going to happen in August?
M. C.: August is agrarian reform month because on August 3, it’s 30 years since Statute 160 was signed. The general sentiment of people who are supposed to be beneficiaries of agrarian reform is that we haven’t done what had to be done. Agrarian reform is a decision by the government and all of the sectors have to make a commitment. Agrarian reform is built with the departments, with the municipalities, and with the people. And in this month of August, we want to revive what is included in the Agrarian Reform Statute, which is systematic, participatory, and belonging, fundamentally, to the people who don’t have land or who don’t have enough land. So, we are going to revive our eight subsystems of the National Agrarian Reform System, gathering together the entities that are part of that. We’re going to invite the Inter-Sector Commission of the National Agrarian Reform System, and we’re going to analyze how these 30 years have gone, as well as what this administration has done, and what are the measures that the people that don’t have land are calling for. All of that is to learn what measures are the ones that an agrarian reform, as a government policy, as an intention to transform the countryside, requires in order to be carried out in the future.
CAMBIO: Changing the subject, how is the substitution for illegal crops going?
M. C.: The drug policy includes a larger role for the Minister of Agriculture, and that is to transform those illegal economies into the legal economy through food production. That has a lot of angles. The first one is knowing what are the scales of production that can respond to an illegal market. Cacao has done very well in that area. We’re also working on beans. There have to be commitments connected to the rural transformation process and to marketing so that the substitution can happen. We’re going to specialize in crop substitution in certain areas. We’re working in Tumaco, for example, with international cooperation, and that has generated some results. On the other hand, there’s Plan Catatumbo, which is a plan concerted in the whole government so as to be able to go into that area with an integrated commitment. I think that the success of crop substitution depends on understanding what it will take to get to productivity, not only in the sector, but in the effective concurrence of the government to guarantee for these communities not only the transformation to the legal economy, but also to stability and local governance. They have to have that if they are to remain in the countryside and transform its economy.
CAMBIO: Minister, does the Agriculture Ministry really have people in the countryside working with the people there?
M. C.: There’s a very important change and it has to do with our arrival in the countryside. The conception, not just for agriculture, but also for substitution, is getting to be individual attention. There may be a person that has a small parcel that raises coca. And I propose to him that he pull up his field and instead plant crop X. There I’m not making a transformation from the illegal economy. I’m generating a level of subsistence for that person who’s trying to change his product. When we get into his area in an articulated manner, not just so he changes what he plants on his parcel, but rather to change the logic of the illegal economy that has coopted that territory, I start to change. To do that, I mention the Catatumbo Pact or the Cauca Plan for Living, because everything has to come in: education, health, agriculture, and drug policy. We’re not substituting a parcel; we’re substituting an economy. Those results will have to be seen in the future. But it includes that I change not a person’s relationship with the coca, but the relationship of the territory with the coca. Soon they will start showing results, because there are dynamics of reconversion and substitution and, fundamentally, of territorial appropriation by the communities, with the assertive accompaniment and governance that’s being promoted by the national government.
CAMBIO: Is there anything more you would like to add, Minister?
M. C.: It’s very important for us that the country take agrarian reform as a great national agreement for the transformation and growth of the countryside that will benefit the campesinos who don’t have any land, or who have insufficient land. And it will allow the indigenous people, just like the Afro-Colombian communities, to have stable and recognized territories. But fundamentally, it’s the country’s commitment that those properties that now are not producing what they should be producing can be converted into a cupboard full of food for the country, for the region, and for the world. That starts with rebuilding territorial relationships to assure peace and justice, so that we can be moving toward the possibility of being Colombia, a world power for life.