IPS-English COLOMBIA: The Food Basket is Running Out Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 10:23:18 -0800 Helda Martínez TUTA, Boyacá, Colombia, Mar 18 (IPS) - Boyacá, known as the ”food basket of Colombia”, is currently the country's second poorest province, and small farmers there say it is more expensive to raise crops than to buy pre-packaged food. The government provides no incentives to raise food crops in Boyacá, and farmers lack the means of transportation necessary for marketing what they sell. At the same time, they must deal with the effects of Colombia's four-decade old armed conflict. In the municipality of Tuta, traditionally a vegetable and dairy farming centre, the government is pursuing a project with a foreign company to grow sugar beets for ethanol production. ”They are replacing milk for children with gasoline for cars,” agronomist Fernando Fonseca commented to IPS. Tuta is one of the 123 municipalities making up the province of Boyacá, which stretches northeast from the centre of the country to the Venezuelan border. The 2005 census placed the provincial population at 1.25 million, a figure estimated by the regional tourism authorities to have grown to 1.4 million today, out of a total national population of 43 million. It is also estimated that 71.5 percent of the population lives in poverty, including 41.5 percent who live in extreme poverty, according to 2006 figures from the National Planning Department. Roughly 18 percent of the people of Boyacá live in the departmental capital, Tunja, while another nine percent live in three cities of between 27,000 and 54,000 inhabitants each. The rest of the population, just over one million people, live scattered throughout the countryside and in municipal capitals with less than 10,000 inhabitants. ”The countryside is depopulated because the Colombian government isn't interested in land for campesinos (peasant farmers),” said Fonseca. The César Gaviria administration (1990-1994) opened up the agricultural market to foreign competition, which benefited from cuts in import tariffs. ”Every six-month period, seven million tons of food entered the country from abroad, while close to a million hectares of crops have disappeared, and the few programmes and resources devoted to the campesino economy have disappeared with them,” said economist Alicia Duque from the non-governmental Institute of Studies for Development and Peace. ”Many countries consider it important to protect their sources of food, which is why they devote financial, industrial and government resources to farm subsidies. But in Colombia, resources earmarked for rural areas go to war and bureaucracy,” said Fonseca. ”The government facilitates the import of the same products we grow, while our own crops are dying. It has become cheaper to buy than to produce. These are measures adopted in advance of the free trade agreement,” he added. ”Imagine what it will be like if they approve it!” Fonseca was referring to the free trade agreement already signed by Colombia and the United States, which the government of rightwing President Álvaro Uribe is actively lobbying to get passed by the U.S. Congress. But it is not only the influx of cheaper food from outside the country that is threatening agricultural production in Boyacá. ”In Paya (190 km northeast of Tunja) they grow the best avocadoes in Colombia. Ten avocadoes cost 1,000 pesos (48 cents of a dollar). But in the big cities they eat Venezuelan avocadoes that cost a dollar and a half each,” local schoolteacher Manuel Rueda told IPS. The reason is simple: there are no adequate roads, highways and vehicles to transport the avocadoes to the large markets. ”We have always been poor here, and every day it seems less likely that we will stop being poor,” campesino Florencio Alfonso told IPS. Alfonso, 63, works for another campesino who is slightly less poor than he is, and devotes his Sundays to working his own parcel of land, near the town Miraflores. ”We don't even grow enough food for our own families. Agriculture only earns money for people who have enough to invest, for those who live near the central highway, or for those who have their own transportation,” he said. ”In Boyacá there used to be huge crops of barley, wheat and potatoes. But then they started to bring them in from other countries and that really hurt us,” he added. Economist Duque pointed out that ”in 1993 barley production nationwide was 72,000 tons, with the vast majority grown in Boyacá, but after the freeing up of the markets output fell to 5,000 tons. The same thing happened in the case of wheat. Domestic production declined as imports increased. In 2004 over a million tons of wheat was imported while domestic output stood at no more than 50,000 tons.” Gaviria's market opening policy and the lack of initiatives to promote agricultural production, combined with the massive displacement of rural populations caused by the armed conflict, have brought an end to formerly vast areas of crops like corn, cassava, onions, beans and coffee. This situation has led to an increase in poverty while spurring younger generations to migrate out of rural areas. ”My children moved to Bogotá. My son is a security guard and my daughter married a soldier. They have two children now,” recounted Alfonso, with a mixture of pride and sadness. ”Anyone who doesn't find work in Bogotá is just lazy. No matter what kind of work it is, at least you have a steady income. But here, you always lose,” added his neighbour, Pablo Hernández. This belief seems to be shared by the majority of the 130 students who graduate as agricultural technicians from José María Poitier technical high school every year and head for the grasslands of Bogotá. ”They get work on flower plantations, on big farms, and they never come back,” instructor Jesús Ávila told IPS. ”Here there are no employment opportunities, no university, there's too much poverty, and even if they wanted to grow crops here, there's no way to profitably market them,” he added. ”We don't have roads.” It takes three hours to travel the 90 km between Miraflores and Tunja. ”And that's now, after they paved the road and made the trip faster. It used to take five hours,” said Hernández. Students at the Poitier school need to spend eight hours travelling 190 km from Chita. ”They get really tired of travelling back and forth, and so those who can just bring the rest of the family with them,” commented Ávila. ”There are still a lot of after-effects of the violence,” he added, prompting a group of women nearby to speak in whispers about the fear in which they lived. Some recalled cases of young men whom the leftwing guerrillas attempted to recruit, first with persuasion, then with threats. Others recalled the far-right paramilitaries who asked youngsters if they wanted to join them; if they said no, they were killed. ”They took them over there,” said one woman, pointing to the heavily forested nearby hills. The three municipalities in Colombia with the highest rates of mortality due to malnutrition are in Boyacá, and government programmes fall far short of combating the problem. In 2006, the Food Programme For Learning (whose acronym in Spanish, PAPA, is also the word for potato, one of the region's main crops) covered 72 percent of schoolchildren between the ages of five and 15, according to government figures. ”From the helicopter we saw that beautiful province, so full of crops, in contrast with the drought and flooding last year,” said President Uribe during his visit to the region in November, accompanied by Queen Silvia of Sweden. ”The minister (of agriculture) is designing mechanisms to support the farmers who were bankrupted by the low price of potatoes in 2006,” Uribe added. ”They lend us money, which we have to pay back in any event, and who can guarantee that we will make any money?” remarked Alfonso. Uribe also spoke about the agreement through which, ”with Swedish technology and Chilean investment, a fuel alcohol plant will be installed in the municipality of Tuta, near the main highway, 30 minutes from Tunja.” It was announced in November that in Tuta, a major cattle farming and agricultural centre, 10,000 hectares of sugar beets will be planted to supply an ethanol distillery run by UK-based company ED & F Man The distillery -- which will enjoy tax exemptions and other benefits by operating with free-zone status -- is to enter into operation in mid-2009, with an expected output of 300,000 litres of ethanol a day. According to Uribe, it will generate significant revenues and provide 6,000 direct or indirect jobs while contributing to the production of clean energy. But the president's rosy predictions are questioned by Fonseca. ”There is no clear evidence of the benefits of this crop. On the contrary, there are doubts raised by the damage caused by monocultures on such large areas of land, as well as the potential contamination of this strategic corridor. And if only the campesinos could also be granted exemptions from taxes and interest on their loans as well,” he said. ***** + COLOMBIA: Biodiesel Push Blamed for Violations of Rights - 2006 (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35722) + COLOMBIA: Casualties in Battle Against Free Trade Pact with US - 2006 (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33323) (END/IPS/LA DV IF MD SU BO/TRASP-SW/HM-MG-DCL/08) = 03181929 ORP013 NNNN