Organic Farming: An Alternative for the People of Rural Arauca

24.09.07

International Peace Observatory

The Peasant-Farmer Association of Arauca (ACA) held the second of a three-part school on organic farming techniques last week in the village of El Oasis (municipality of Arauquita). In its first trip to the small oil-rich but war-torn department on Colombia’s eastern border with Venezuela in over a year and half, the International Peace Observatory (IPO) accompanied the ACA in El Oasis, from September 20-22.

The ACA, together with many rural movements nation-wide, is encouraging more and more small farmers to adopt techniques that they feel will better protect the environment and the campesinos’ health, as well as free them from dependence on costly chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides controlled by powerful foreign companies.

“In the most isolated or violent parts of the country, that is where people are most interested in organic farming” said Juan Mendoza, general secretary of FENSUAGRO, a nation-wide federation of rural workers. Mendoza studied agriculture at Colombia’s National University and led these workshops in Arauca, as he has many others around the country. “People don’t have access to the chemicals they need and have to find ways to grow with what they have available.”

In Arauca, which has been subjected to several rounds of destructive aerial fumigation in the last five years due to the presence of illicit coca, there is little love for Monsanto. The giant chemical company produces the secret herbicide formula that military aircraft spray over entire communities, destroying both illegal and legal crops and impoverishing inhabitants. Many testify to the toxic effects these fumigations have on the area’s rivers and soils, and the illnesses they believe appear as a result. However, with little knowledge of alternative techniques, farmers in Arauca continue to buy seeds and agricultural chemicals from Monsanto and similar companies.

In the first day of workshops, Mendoza criticized the use of toxic chemicals among the region’s campesinos, as well as the “monoculture” of yuca and banana found in local fields. For healthy soil and better nutrition, he said, every farmer should have “at least twenty different crops. These lands are good for growing other foods: beans, peanuts, sesame, fruits and more.”

According to Mendoza, despite the rise of large scale, US-style industrial farming, 75 percent of Colombia’s food is still produced by small farmers. But the traditional practices of the past have given way to the widespread use of the same agrochemicals used by those industrial farms.

The practice of organic farming, he said, is inherently incompatible with the chemical-based farming the campesinos are used to. Students were encouraged to use instead a system of caldos (broths) made of various mixtures of inexpensive minerals and organic ingredients and left to ferment for anywhere between one and 50 days.

With Mendoza’s instruction the students created three sample caldos. One was a fertilizer made from cow manure, milk and a number of other ingredients that was to be left sealed in a plastic barrel for several weeks. Another was a liquid to repel (but not kill) insects, made of lime, sulfur and water boiled in a big metal drum and left overnight. As the repellant was ready quickly, students were able to practice spraying it on a nearby banana field belonging to the ACA that is serving as a sort of pilot program for this project.

The third caldo was mixed right in the field, with copper, zinc and magnesium sulfates and lime, a mixture meant to treat a disease these banana plants were already suffering from.

Leaving behind “capitalist” farming methods and adopting more “socialist” ones is not just a technical question but a social one. Mendoza showed a video one night about a communal farming initiative in Honduras. “Look at how the families are all out in the fields, working together,” he said. “That’s how we create a society that moves forward.” Lamenting the lack of female participation (only one woman was there among ten students), Mendoza explained that when women do not have an active role in running and administering a farm, the farm is much weaker. “If the man dies, or has to go away for a while or anything like that, the farm dies and the family looses the land.” Children need to have a role, too, he said: “If I don’t teach my child how to work from the beginning, I’m going to be raising a criminal.”

Turnout at the workshops was much lower than expected, a disappointment mentioned often during the days of the event. While at least 20 had committed to coming, only 10 farmers actually arrived, most from El Oasis or close-by. The school’s first session had seen nearly 30 participants. Both students and organizers agreed that this was due above all to the extremely dangerous situation today in Arauca. Since October 2006, the army has been constantly launching military operations throughout the department’s rural areas, fumigating, bombing and shooting at the villages with ground troops, airplanes and helicopter gunships. Peasants who are active in social organizations are targeted for arbitrary arrests and even extra-judicial “executions.”

Added to this is the more recent conflict between the two guerrilla groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). For more than a year and a half, the two groups have been fighting not just the Colombian state but also each other. How it started is not clear, but since the violence erupted, one revenge killing has lead to another. The civilian population has suffered greatly from this, as unarmed peasants supposedly loyal to one group are threatened and sometimes killed by the other.

Because of this situation, IPO has been unable to enter Arauca or physically accompany the ACA for 18 months.

But the ACA and the communities that conform it say they are committed to moving forward and building a better future for themselves and for all of the Colombian countryside. It was clear that in El Oasis, a town of 500 people, the ACA enjoys widespread support. The people were happy to receive its leaders, FENSUAGRO, and IPO in their community.

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