Author: Neil Sorensen

By Land and Rural Development Program in Colombia

Sometimes, social change comes from the most unexpected places. In Tolima, it is coming from the cacao plant. Thanks to a public-private partnership facilitated by USAID, the women from 120 families are walking down the road of equality and are empowered to use their voices. They have realized that expressing their opinions is important, and that their ideas strengthen their families and community.

What began as a training in land preparation, seeding, irrigation systems, and business management gradually became a scenario in which women learned to express themselves and seek to fill leadership roles in spaces traditionally reserved for men.

Yolanda Tapiero, a member of the farmers’ association Asoacas in the municipality of Ortega, never used to participate or speak up in association meetings. She says she was shy and embarrassed to address male colleagues in this professional setting, far from her house.

“The partnership integrated us and taught us to ask ourselves how we worked together. So we abandoned our fear of talking to others. We saw that nothing bad would happen if we expressed ourselves and spoke up. Now, in my association, I request the floor and I propose what I see and what could be useful to the association. We have a lot to say, but it’s because we don’t express ourselves that many things get loss,” Yolanda Tapiero, member of Asoacas, Ortega, Tolima.

Salomat Choriea Breaks the Mold

This blog post was originally published on Chemonics Impact Stories.

At age 16, Salomat Chorieva started her first job on a farm in Tajikistan. She endured harsh working conditions, growing cotton and wheat on 700 square meters of farmland. She handed over all her harvests to the head of the farm, who undercompensated her for her labor. Working within a land system dating back to Soviet times further complicated her situation: farmers had little control over their land and little knowledge of their rights. Ms. Chorieva seemingly had little upward mobility and no end goal in sight.

At its inception, Ms. Chorieva’s story was not unusual. Agriculture in Tajikistan accounts for approximately 64 percent of employment, and dehkan farms — post-Soviet individual and family farms in Central Asia — are commonly staffed by women, who typically occupy lower-level positions in the agricultural hierarchy. Yet by age 25, Ms. Chorieva broke the mold — she became the first woman in Khatlon province’s Dusti district to head a dehkan farm. She now runs a 27,500 square-meter plot, and her farm boasts harvests of corn, cucumbers, cotton, green beans, and carrots. With her business, she supports her family of six and makes a decent profit. Owning the farm gives her a sense of freedom.

“I have my own money; I can pay my expenses and taxes and divide the profits among family members who work with me,” she explains.

How did Ms. Chorieva achieve this entrepreneurial feat by age 25? While her resilience, motivation, and agency were certainly crucial ingredients to her success, she was not working alone. Her success was facilitated by Aysifat Norbekova, a tashabbuskor (land rights activist), who works with USAID’s Feed the Future Tajikistan Land Market Development Activity (LMDA) to empower local farmers and guide them through the land registration process. Read the full story

Last month, top Colombian economic minds gathered in Bogotá for a Grand Economic Forum on attracting investment as the country emerges from a decades-long civil war. Andres Cadena, a senior partner at McKinsey & Company, distilled the issue to its essence: “Colombia’s great challenge is that it has not found its growth model. The country has been growing with an economic model that generates growth, but not well-being. It is not an inclusive model.”

With no shortage of development dollars flowing to Colombia, how can that investment translate into an inclusive model of private sector-led economic growth? And how can the model become self-reliant over time? Read the full story

By Land and Rural Development Program in Colombia

What to do?

By Land and Rural Development Program in Colombia

When she returned to her land in Morroa, Sucre, Sirle Ruiz never imagined that ñame would be the crop that would help her reactivate her farm’s economy. The tropical tuber was once a mainstay for her family and she remembered how before the violence displaced her family, she helped her father sell it in town.

Farming became complicated when ‘la violencia’—the ongoing conflict between paramilitary, the military, and leftist guerrillas—arrived in the Montes de María region of the Colombian Caribbean. Besides losing their crops and livelihoods, her grandfather, a community leader, and her uncle were killed by guerrilla groups.

“After my grandfather died, my dad sold the plot for less than US$200, which was very little money,” she explained. “We were displaced and this affected us a lot. We were not used to being in the city, because we lived in the countryside.”

In 2014, Ruiz received a favorable land restitution ruling, which recognized their ownership of the land they were forced to abandon, and allowed them to come back to their farm. Since then, Ruiz has been an active member of the Cambimba Agriculture Association.

Since the creation of the Land Restitution Unit, USAID’s support has been integral. What is the current balance of seven years of work between the two entities?

By Land and Rural Development Program in Colombia

With the highest number of displaced persons in the Western Hemisphere, the Colombian government is facing the great task of returning lands to thousands of people. In the post-conflict era, many displaced people have been moving back to the land where they used to work and plant their crops before the violence pushed them out, but the absence of the state and the lack of guarantees for peace continues to cloud their future with doubt.

For the last seven years, the land restitution process has provided legal security for property and comprehensive reparations for displaced people and victims of the conflict. Over this time, the process has benefited more than 38,000 people, recognizing the ownership of some 300,000 hectares.

In the wake of the new administration and a new President, the Land Restitution Unit (LRU), led by Ricardo Sabogal, collected the agency’s historical memory, its main achievements, and the challenges that remain in the restitution process. Last month, the LRU, together with USAID and other partners that have supported the land restitution policy, shared experiences with leaders from other countries and launched the book Memories of the Restitution Process: Lessons Learned and Methodologies for Restituting Lands and Territories in Colombia.

By Land and Rural Development Program in Colombia

In rural Colombia, coffee is not only a way of life, but it is also a path out of poverty and toward greater economic self-reliance. With USAID’s support, coffee producers from indigenous communities in Colombia’s Cesar region are improving their capacity to grow and process higher-value speciality coffee. This provides benefits far and wide: for local coffee producers, it means greater income-generating opportunities. For the regional government in Cesar, it means greater domestic revenue generation and local economic growth. And for a U.S. business like Green Mountain Coffee, it means a better and more sustainable supply chain for high-quality coffee.