Land reform in Colombia

Bread, land and peace

Land reform is one of the few political flags they government continue to wave. 

Land and rural development is the first item on the agenda of the peace talks between the Farc and the government of President Juan Manuel Santos which began properly in Havana on november 19th. 

Resolving the land issue is a necessary condition for ending the conflict but it also true that land disputes can be settled only if violence ends.

Land distribution in Colombia is among the most unequal in the world, with 52% of farms in the hands of just 1.15% of landowners, according to a study by the United Nations development program. 

The agriculture ministry says that only 22% of potential arable land in a vast country is cultivated. 

Around 6.5m hectares (16m acres) of land, including some of the most fertile, was stolen, abandoned or forcibly changed hands in other ways between 1.985 and 2.008 as a result of the conflict. 

That reversed the meagre gains of timid land-reform efforts in the past. 

Landowners have filed complaints accusing the Farc itself of seizing 807,000 hectares, either by forcing them to sell or driving them off with death threats.

The government is trying to return much of their land to those who fled, even if they never held formal title to it, under an ambitious land-restitution scheme that has received more than 26,600 claims, totalling just under 2m hectares, in a little over a year. 

The government has also drafted a new law on agriculture, which it has not yet sent to Congress partly because it wants to consult indigenous and black communities, but also so that it can incorporate any agreements that may be reached in the talks with the Farc.

The two sides agree on some things, such as improving market access for smallholders, better technical assistance, and keeping subsidies. 

But the government bill also emphasises export agribusiness, with incentives for biofuels, and says that redistribution to peasant farmers will involve only fallow land. 

The Farc has not issued any public proposals, but it has always stuck to its 1.960s position of expropriation of large landholdings, while stressing “food security” (supplying the local market) rather than exports. 

It also wants land held by foreigners to be confiscated.

On this point they have some unexpected allies. 

Other bills in Congress, from legislators across the political spectrum, call for curbs on foreign investment in land. 

The government rejects this as the product of “unfortunate xenophobia” as Juan Camilo Restrepo, the agriculture minister, put it. He says the government will introduce a measure to regulate, but not restrict, foreign investment in farmland.

The Colombian Agriculture Society (SAC), which represents agribusiness, calculates that up to $6 billion in foreign investment is on hold because of the bills, and also because of a recent ruling by the constitutional court that restricts the purchase of land from peasants who received it under the land reform.

Neither peasant farmers nor agribusiness are directly represented at the Havana talks. 

An umbrella group of peasant-farmer associations has drafted its own proposals for rural development. 

Its leader, Julio Armando Fuentes, says the peace talks should consider this. 

The SAC is also drafting proposals to take to the negotiators.

But that may be to misunderstand what the peace talks could and should do. 

What is required is a broad agreement on the balance between rural development and land redistribution, with the details to be implemented through the normal democratic process.

As the talks in Havana began, the Farc’s chief negotiator, Iván Márquez, announced a unilateral ceasefire, ordering all guerrilla units to refrain from attacks and acts of sabotage for two months. 

He said it was a “show of goodwill”. 

But it looked more like a public-relations exercise, and is not necessarily a good omen for the talks. 

The Farc has used past ceasefires merely to regroup and recruit. 

The defence minister said military operations would continue. 

The only ceasefire the government will agree to, officials say, is the one that ends the conflict for good.