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News > Colombia

Colombian State Announces Purchase of Land From Cattle Ranchers

  • Photograph provided today by the Presidency of Colombia that shows the president of the Colombian Federation of Livestock Farmers (Fedegan), José Félix Lafaurie, while speaking with the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Cecilia López Montaño, after a meeting in Bogotá

    Photograph provided today by the Presidency of Colombia that shows the president of the Colombian Federation of Livestock Farmers (Fedegan), José Félix Lafaurie, while speaking with the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Cecilia López Montaño, after a meeting in Bogotá | Photo: Presidencia Colombia

Published 6 October 2022
Opinion

The Minister of Agriculture, Cecilia López, announced this Thursday, in a press conference, the purchase of three million hectares from the country's cattle ranchers to start the agrarian reform.

"The purchase of land starts with the offer of Fedegan (Colombian Federation of Cattle Ranchers), tomorrow (Friday), we will sign and we will give more details. The agreement is signed with all the details; there are three million hectares that the Government will buy from Fedegan", said the Minister.

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From the Casa de Nariño (seat of the Executive), executives of Fedegan and the national Government signed this agreement that the President of Colombia himself, Gustavo Petro, called historical on his Twitter account.

The Minister pointed out that the agreement is the first step for the components of the agrarian reform.

"We have reached a total agreement with Fedegan; this is a historic act, and the third component of the agrarian reform begins and starts. We already had the first one, the titling; we are titling an important number of hectares, more than 600,000. The second is the SAE (Special Assets Society, in charge of managing the assets taken from drug trafficking), which is 125,000 hectares for peasant organizations", he concluded.

The president of Fedegan, José Félix Lafaurie Rivera -one of Petro's harshest critics- highlighted what was agreed upon and the Government's conciliation to reach agreements.

"You must thank the Minister and President Petro, this is a government of dialogue and agreement and consequently, we have advanced very quickly; in less than a month, we have reached a great agreement that will achieve a lot of tranquility to the rural sector and at the same time the possibility for the rural sector to consolidate a middle class," said Lafaurie.

López highlighted that what was agreed with the cattle ranchers helps fulfill the Havana agreements -signed in 2016 between the extinct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the State- and strengthens the comprehensive peace plan proposed by the current Government.

"This is a step towards total peace and the process of compliance with the Havana agreement. We are going to sign an agreement and a methodology, as I have said in Congress, a process with filigree: efficient, transparent and in the shortest possible time, we will give all the details", expressed López.

Colombia has had a decades-long problem with land distribution, which, according to the National Memory Center, is a "historical debt of the State" deepened by the armed conflict.

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