I am from Colombia and like many of my compatriots I used to live within my own world without really understanding what was going on. The government controlled radio and TV put out false, shameless information to the extent that it kept us from reality.

To be involved in the work of justice and peace of the Comboni Missionaries I began to take on board what “land grabbing” (LG) involved and, from the texts published in our blog, I got to know the sad reality of this issue in different parts of the world: Africa, Asia, Europe even and to the same extent, Latin America.

Last year, in one of the Comboni Missionary reunions, I had been invited to a meeting given by an official from CODHES (Organisation of human rights and movement) on the subject of human rights in Colombia.  This conference taught me the real causes and consequences of widespread media coverage of such events as murders and forced eviction of the population; facts which go to show how the LG in Colombia is a phenomenon that has existed for years and which in recent time has been alarmingly on the increase. The problems that the Colombian peasants have confronted are paving the way increasingly to land grabbing where it has been arising in different parts of the country.  It is within this context that is to be found “the agricultural strike”.

Because of the mis-information that we are subjected to, the reasons for this strike are seen by the Colombian public as ambiguous. For many, this question doesn’t concern us directly, and even if we experience an increase in food prices or scarcity in some products, we don’t see it as part and parcel of the strike by farmers. Besides, we don’t worry because there’s nothing that cannot be solved by having to pay a little more money for food or to use other products instead of those that are scarce.  Seen from a larger perspective the agricultural strike shows up the problems that affect us in quite the reverse way and we anticipate a dark future for us all in Colombia.

In the Facebook page of the Comité Por La Dignidad Papera y La Soberanía Alimentaria you can get to know “certain” causes of these problems.

Firstly is the problem of commercial relations that Colombia has been establishing since the start of the 1990’s, notably with the USA. Since then, the commercial agreements that Colombia has established has obliged it to open up its borders to products that are still traditionally grown, products such as rice, and sugar-cane.  Many people prefer these imported products both for their cost and because the business sector keeps quiet as to their origin whether home grown or produced abroad.  Some are even mixed on purpose such as in the case of rice. That leaves at a commercial disadvantage the indigenous farmers who have invested in harvesting their produce and who then are faced with a lower sale price, with the result that leads many to bankruptcy.

Some experts voice their concern that the Agreement for Free Exchange (ALE) that Colombia signed up to with different countries was the start of the worst moment for both farmers and Colombia as a whole. Thus as one senator from Colombia put it: “Es mejor ser vaca en la Unión Europea (UE) que campesino colombiano, porque recibe más plata del Estado una vaca en la UE que un campesino en Colombia"  -better is to be a cow in Europe than a peasant farmer in Columbia because a cow receives more money from Brussels than a peasant farmer does in Columbia-. In the EU agricultural subsidies are way above those that the Columbian government grants to the same sector.

Another big problem is the weakness of policies against the smuggling of all sorts of products including food that find their way in to the country due to its vast stretches of frontiers. What consumers of course prefer is to see prices reduce and without any indication of their origin. Associated with the organization ALE is another troubling question. The government through the ICA (Columbian Institute of Agriculture) passed Law 9.70 which governs the use of seeds and which forces farmers to buy « certified » seeds. Although this Law has been suspended, nevertheless it is there in the shadows. What it amounts to is that farmers would be obliged to buy not only seeds, but in addition fertilizers and other agro products from the same company as the seeds, the reason being that by doing this a guaranteed harvest can be assured. On the internet one can find  a complete documentary film about this law and its harmful effects in both Spanish & English.

It’s against all that background that the Colombian peasants are battling day after day without taking into account the High prices of agricultural products, problems of disease, droughts, floods -who can forget the devastating floods from previous years? Even the President of the Agricultural Bank confirmed in a TV broadcast that farmers owed it a lot of money because they couldn’t manage their costs with the prices they got for their produce nor maintain profitability.

Farmers have been able to spell out their problems to the national government via their organizations and to put forward their main claims:

• To put measures into immediate effect to face up to the production crisis caused by imports, the ALE and the opening up of trade;
• To strengthen policies against smuggling;
• To get rid of Law 9.70;
• To reduce prices for agricultural products;
• To cancel farmers’ debts to the banks;
• To invest money into social needs both in urban areas and the countryside: the government must reply to the demands of the peasants in the areas of Health & Education.

There are other questions to be resolved: one is the concentration of land amongst a small proportion of people, owing to the problems linked to property rights. The government claims to limit the discussion to farmers’ debt to the banks, which it still hasn’t moved on.

In 2013, Columbian peasant farmers, tired of suffering economic losses and of government negligence, took to the Streets to protest. President Juan Manuel Santos had lied to the public, stating: “rural strike does not exist.” But he had signed agreements with the farmers which he had neither respected nor remembered subsequently.

Recently, last May, farmers took to the streets once more, to demand that the government respects the agreements from 2013, but they had been largely ignored by the media who turned their attention to the presidential elections. Faced with this problem, we are asking the following:

“What kind of future are we faced with if our farmers give in and with no other alternative, have to sell their land to the highest bidder?” The buyers are ready to “negotiate” moreover with unjust prices, but the worst is that the farmers would lose their land forever!

Without land (which means without home also), farmers would be joining the already long queues of the unemployed in the country. Multi-nationals and/or foreign governments would be cultivating our land, exploiting our mineral and water resources and we would finish up with having to buy produce esthetically arranged on supermarket shelves not knowing where it’s from or whether it’s good or bad for us.

If we don’t want this sort of future then we must align ourselves with the farmers in their struggle to keep their land and to ensure food security for all Colombians.

Martin Luther King once said: “Do not harm me with the deeds of bad people but with the indifference of the good.”

What is happening in Colombia? On the Popular Agrarian Strike:

• http://kasamaproject.org/threads/entry/what-is-happening-in-colombia-on-the-popular-agrarian-strike
• http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/04/30-8
• http://www.ww4report.com/node/13189
• http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/04/30-8