Post Type: Blog

There is a quiet assumption embedded in almost every climate intervention that touches farmland. It runs through NbS project designs, food systems traceability platforms, RE siting frameworks, and carbon market methodology documents alike. The assumption is this: that the person named in land document, mostly referred as land record, is the person whose decision or behaviour determines what happens on that land.

This assumption is almost always wrong. And the consequences of that wrongness — for climate outcomes, for community equity, and for the long-term integrity of the interventions themselves — are more serious than most practitioners have reckoned with.

Land Is Not What the Title Says It Is

“Land is not simply a resource or a commodity. It is a social, legal, ecological, cultural, and political question.”

This is not philosophical throat-clearing. It is the most practical thing a climate practitioner must hear. Every intervention that treats land as a commodity, a carbon sink, a supply chain input, or a renewable energy site is making a category error from the outset if it ignores the social, legal, ecological, and political web of relations that actually governs what that land does, and who it does it for.

The formal land record, the Record of Rights, the cadastral map, the land parcel boundary in a GIS system — captures some details about a named individual, parcel and the state, more  with a transactional objective. It tells, who can sell the land, mortgage it, and receive compensation if it is acquired. What it does not tell, and what it was never designed to tell you, is who actually farms it, who grazes it between crops, who depends on it for their livelihoods or culture, who protects the watershed or forest that feeds it water, nutrition and pollination, and who will bear the consequences when a climate shock, a carbon project, or a solar farm arrives.

The Five Invisible Stakeholders on Every Farm

In any piece of agricultural land in South Asia — a rainfed plot in the Gangetic plain, a terraced field in the hills of Nepal, a smallholder farm on the edge of a forest in Bangladesh. The land record or document may show a single owner. The reality on the ground is almost always a layered, overlapping web of at least five distinct groups of people with real, substantive relationships to that land — none of whom may appear in the record.

1. The tenant, the sharecropper, the woman farmer, the agricultural labourer: These are people who till the soil, contribute to decisions about what to plant, manage soil health, and extract the harvest. They exercise genuine, functional tenure – access, use, manage and extract  the land. Their care, persistence, adaptability and what we might recognise as local ecological knowledge, are precisely the kind of engagements, that climate resilience depends on. Yet they are invisible in the public farm service program who transfers subsid/grant to bank account of recorded land owner, to the carbon project developer who consults the land record, invisible to the food company conducting supplier due diligence, and invisible to the RE developer seeking consent from the “landowner.”
2. The fallow-season users : When the crop is harvested and the land lies fallow, it does not stand empty. Landless and herders bring their animals to graze. Village youth use it as a playground. Families gather fodder and fuel. Women collect seasonal produce. The land is, in this period, a commons — accessed, managed, and depended upon by people whose names never appear in any title document, but whose livelihoods are directly at stake when a solar park fence goes up or a carbon project recommends change in land use.
3. The upstream contributors : Perhaps the most conceptually challenging group: people who do not use or access or directly derive any benefit the agricultural land at all, but whose actions on other land directly conditions on it, making it usable as a farm land. The community that protects the commons- the wetlands, pasture land in the village landscape mosaic or care the forests on the ridge above, supports the moisture regime, the pollination, the nutrient flow, and the microclimate of the farmland below. They are, in the most meaningful ecological sense, the ignored tenure holders of that farmland’s productivity — but neither tenure law nor project design has any category for them. NbS interventions that reward the forest community and the farmer separately, without recognising this connection and relationship, risk breaking the very ecological chain they are supposed to protect.
4. The power-holders: On many landscapes, the person who actually determines what happens on the land is neither the titled owner nor any of the productive users above. It is a local power-broker: a village leader, a trader, a money-lender, a political figure who controls access, dictates terms, often decide the crop choice and takes a share of the surplus. Any traceability system, carbon registry, or value chain initiative that conducts due diligence with the formal landowner while ignoring these power relations is conducting due diligence on a fiction.
5. The emotionally and ecologically connected:  The final category is the most easily dismissed and perhaps the most consequential for the long term: communities whose connection to a piece of land is mediated not through use or ownership but through a sacred tree, a migratory species, a water source, an ancestral memory. These communities may have no legal claim and no day-to-day management role, yet their connection is threatened,  when the tree is felled for a solar project, when the grassland that supports their sacred species is converted to a carbon plantation. Then they become active and powerful actors in shaping what that land does and does not permit. Ignoring them in project design does not make them disappear; it makes them opponents.

Is Formalisation a Trap for NbS and Carbon Markets?

Here is where the argument becomes most urgent for practitioners in NbS, carbon markets, and RE transitions specifically.

The default response to tenure complexity in climate project design is formalisation: map the land, title the owner, document the rights, create the contract. This feels like due diligence. It feels like inclusion. It is frequently neither. Rather on ground, it would lead to exclusion, injustice; often triggering conflict and adding risk to very resilience and permanence that such climate investments look at.

What this Means for Climate and Food Intervention?

For practitioners across the four domains, here are what the implications look like.

For NbS designers and implementers: Your theory of change almost certainly passes through tenure. If your intervention involves changing land use — planting trees, restoring grasslands, creating buffer zones, shifting from annual crops to perennials — you are changing the tenure, the land-people relations, for every one of the five invisible stakeholder groups described above, whether you intend to or not. Tenant or women farmers will lose access to land they depend on or will be required to put more labour, without any matching benefits. Fallow-season users run the risk of being excluded from areas the project now controls. Upstream communities will find their traditional forest management reclassified as a carbon asset belonging to someone else. Designing for tenure complexity is not a safeguard add-on to an NbS project. It is the intervention that any NbS investment must not ignore, if they aim intended result.

For traceability practitioners: Your supplier due diligence and traceability systems are reading land records and mistaking them for ground truth. The smallholder farmer who appears in your system as the “landowner” may be farming on land they share with a tenant, borrowing land from a relative, or managing a plot whose actual productive decisions are controlled by a trader-creditor. Deforestation-free commitments, living income benchmarks, and regenerative agriculture certification all require understanding not just who owns the land on paper, but who works it, who depends on it, and who has the power to change what happens on it. Traceability without tenure intelligence is traceability without integrity, and may not serve the purpose otherwise.

For renewable energy developers and siting teams: The social licence problem that has slowed RE deployment across South Asia is substantially a tenure problem. Projects that consult the titled landowner and bypass the tenant, the fallow-season user, and the power-holder do not have community consent — they have a signed document. The difference becomes apparent when construction begins. More fundamentally, RE siting that converts productive agricultural or agroforestry land — particularly land with high tenure complexity and multiple invisible users — creates climate injustice even as it delivers climate mitigation. The question is not just whether the land is “available.” It is whether the transition is tenure-just?

For carbon market developers and climate finance practitioners: This may be the most urgent message of all. Carbon and climate finance that treats tenure as a compliance checkbox — something to tick before the real work of carbon accounting begins — will fail ecologically and socially. Projects that skip genuine tenure due diligence do not just risk community resistance. They risk undermining the very ecological conditions their carbon claims depend on. A community whose customary tenure arrangements have been disrupted by a REDD+ or NbS project does not continue to manage the forest the way they did before. The carbon is not permanent. It never was, because the governance was never secure. Tenure due diligence is not a legal formality. It is the ecological foundation of carbon integrity.

The Framework That Is Imperative

This 360 degree framing  brings a spectrum that is worth taking seriously as a practical planning tool. At one end: relational land systems, where land is identity, stewardship, and collective accountability. At the other: transactional land systems, where land is a commodity, a carbon asset, a market instrument. Most landscapes in South Asia occupy a hybrid, contested middle ground — and the most important insight is that both relational and transactional approaches can reproduce inequality if poorly designed.

The question for practitioners is not which end of the spectrum to push toward, but how to design interventions that genuinely strengthen the relational systems that underpin social justice and ecological resilience while providing the security and recognition that transactional engagement requires.

This is not a both-and compromise. It is a fundamentally different design logic — one that starts by asking, before any project document is written: who actually governs this land, under what conditions and terms, and with what consequences for climate resilience if we intervene?

The evolution of land governance thinking in most countries, can be mapped in four words: from Revenue (colonial-era extraction) to Reform (rights-based redistribution) to Record (digitisation and formalisation) to Relation (the recognition that governance is ultimately about people and their connections to land, not about documents).

Most climate projects are operating at the Record stage and calling it progress. The work ahead is to move to Relation — and to do so with the urgency that the climate timeline demands.

A Closing Provocation

Aldo Leopold wrote that conservation is harmony between people and land. The word he used was (wo)men, a deliberate correction that places the gendered dimensions of land access at the centre of the conservation project.

Harmony, in the context of climate action on farmland, means recognising that the land being intervened on is already full — full of relationships, dependencies, histories, and ecological knowledge that your project design did not create and cannot replace. The question is whether such external intervention will work with those relationships or against them.

Every climate project that lands on farmland without understanding the tenure relations governing it is not just missing an opportunity. It is, in the most specific and measurable sense, a climate risk.

The land record is not lying out of malice. It was never designed to tell what you need to know in the climate contexts. The work of climate-responsive land governance is to build the tools, the protocols, and the institutional will to see what the present record cannot show — and to govern accordingly.

This blog draws on Pranab Ranjan Choudhury’s session on Land Tenure, Land Use and Climate: A Nexus Perspective, delivered at the Summer School on Climate Responsive Land Governance, Dhulikhel, Nepal, April 2026, and on the multi-tenure framework he has been arguing for as a way forward for climate actions.

An indigenous community in the Amazon learns basic land surveying to fix the errors of the past.

One glance at the shape of Itilla reveals that the person who determined the community’s oblong borders, was unaware of the realities of forest-dwelling communities in the Amazon. The Itilla reservation is an unusual 45 kilometers long and two kilometers wide. The territory looks more like a city block than the collective territory of a community in the Amazon.

Itilla, home to over 250 people, is located in Colombia on the northwestern edge of the vast Amazon rainforest. The community is accessed from San José de Guaviare, over 100 kilometers of dirt road followed by a boat ride down the Itilla river. Over 20 years ago, Amancio Yukuna, the community’s school teacher, was there when a public servant came to measure the Itilla reservation.

“The agent got out of the boat and walked a couple of kilometers. He took some photos and then turned around and got back in the boat and left,” Yukuna remembers.

Although the creation of the reservation was seen as an achievement, this territory of straight lines left out the most important aspects of their lives: the forest and everything within.

“Little by little we realized that we weren’t happy with the borders of our collective land,” explains Yakuna. “We are missing all the places we need to survive, where we hunt and fish and our sacred sites. There are no rivers or lagoons or any water, it’s all outside of our territory.”

A Forested Country

Medicinal plants, forest food products, fish, and wild animals are all examples of these instruments. The bamboo-like plant caño de carrizo is used by the community to make the pan flute, which is used in traditional ceremonies and dances to communicate with ancestral spirits. Knowing where these plants grow and the animals inhabit is paramount to cultural preservation.

“Out there in the forest is where we find our sacred sites. Our elders have shown us where to go to find these sites and how to use the instruments they offer. We know the trails that the jaguars use, we know what fish are living in the lagoons and rivers,” explains Hermes Londoño, one of the community members who learned to map Itilla territory with a tablet and GPS.

Since launching the mapping initiative, Hermes and his neighbors have carried out expeditions, some during multiple days, to reach the farthest sites in the community’s territory.

In August 2024, the community finished the mapping exercise, logging hundreds of GPS coordinates, complete with descriptions and land use types. The completed map was printed and hung in the maloca for the community to view. For the majority of the community, it was the first time they had viewed their territory on a two-dimensional map that overlays sacred sites and land usage over the 2002 borders of the collective land rectangle.

“With this exercise, we are telling the government that we have formed our territory with our own team and we want to use these resources. Everybody is looking at this zone wanting to exploit the original forests, but these forests support our lives and are the basis of our cultural values. And now, we have documented it.” says Captain Garcia.

Under Captain Garcia’s leadership, they unanimously agreed to send this information to the IGAC and eventually to Colombia’s National Land Agency to expand the boundaries of their territory from the current 8,000 hectares to more than 102,000 hectares.

If they are successful, proper land use management and administration in protected areas like national parks could also consolidate indigenous land rights to disincentivize further deforestation. USAID bases its strategy on the logic that addressing land tenure issues and developing modern concepts of land administration with indigenous communities will lead to improved biodiversity conservation and open the doors to climate change mitigation.

Cross-posted from USAID Exposure

USAID is helping rural communities to obtain property titles and leverage investments in agricultural value chains.

For decades, rural communities in Colombia have faced challenges related to not owning the land they live on. The lack of secure tenure has consequences and keeps thousands of families from accessing government programs and subsidies that could improve their opportunities for success.

Without a registered property title, rural families can continue to cultivate their land and invest in their homes, but in the face of potential displacement due to a resurgence in violence, they lack the legal protection and risk losing their entire livelihood.

Carlos Romero is a farmer in the Montes de María region, whose land has never been formalized. A notarized receipt of payment is all he has to show that he is the land’s rightful owner. His whole life, Romero has grown ñame, a starchy yam-like tuber, as his main income and the means to raise his family. In fact, Romero credits ñame for the fact that three of his four children have finished school, and his son is currently at university. Despite the challenges, Romero has given them a promising future.

Land Ownership

In 2024, Carlos received the registered land title to his farm in San Jacinto, Bolívar, thanks to USAID’s support to increase land formality in rural areas affected by the conflict. In San Jacinto, experts surveyed 3,700 parcels and delivered some 1,100 cases to Colombia’s National Land Agency for titling. So far, the government has issued over 600 land titles to farmers like Romero.

“Now that we have our property title, we can cultivate with confidence. If you don’t have a land title, even the person who sold you the land can come and claim it as their own. But with a title you are safe from those problems,” says Romero.

USAID is using its expertise in land tenure programming and rural development to carry out 11 large-scale land formalization activities across the country, many of which have taken place in some of Colombia’s most complicated municipalities.

Small Business Owner

By Julius Bright Ross and Amanda Clark

In a sunny field in El Salvador’s Usulután Department this August, approximately twenty members of a Farmer Field School gathered around a plot containing six different varieties of maize. As they discussed the comparative advantages of the varieties, they keenly appraised their likelihood of withstanding both dry spells and heavy precipitation events. Heavy precipitation, in particular, was top-of-mind after intense storms fell on much of El Salvador this June, flattening young crops and stripping fields of topsoil and organic matter. Another tool for improving resilience wound its way through the maize plants: jack bean (Canavalia ensiformis), planted alongside maize as beans have been for millennia to enrich the soil and provide ground cover. Using funding from the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is promoting Canavalia ground cover as part of a suite of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices, which aim to sustainably increase agricultural productivity and incomes, adapt and build resilience to climate change, and (where possible), reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions. CRS’ suite of CSA approaches in El Salvador, which they term “water-smart agriculture”, focuses primarily on increasing and stabilizing yields sustainably to improve food security during intermittent droughts. One farmer, Adonis, has enthusiastically adopted Canavalia and other CSA techniques, emphasizing to the BHA team that the ground cover keeps his soil moist during brief dry spells.

Nevertheless, greater adoption of Canavalia and, in particular, more laborious soil and water conservation measures such as in-field infiltration trenches by Salvadoran farmers is heavily curtailed by the trade-off between near-term results and how long a farmer can count on farming the same plot of land — that is, how secure their land tenure is. In El Salvador, a high percentage of farmers do not own their land, often paying a landowner for the usage rights in-kind through crop residues to feed cattle with during the dry season. When unofficially surveyed, only about half of the CRS farmer field school members reported owning the land they farmed, and only half of those that rented (including Adonis) were confident they would be able to farm the same land the next year.

Land tenure refers to the relationship individuals and groups have with land and its resources, including trees, minerals, pastures, and water. These relationships are defined by land tenure systems – the rules, customs, and laws that define how property rights to land are allocated, transferred, used, or managed. More broadly, the field of land and resource governance (LRG) describes the complex relationships between land and societal elements such as culture, politics, economics, and history. The unique LRG context that describes a community’s land tenure varies both geographically and over time, but is of crucial importance to understanding challenges to economic development.

Insecure land tenure is linked in complex ways to food insecurity. The possession of secure tenure over land can itself be a marker of wealth and permanency, which can affect food security in myriad ways including the ability to invest in inputs, the time to acquire knowledge of the land’s idiosyncrasies for growing crops, and social capital with long-term neighbors that might provide coping mechanisms during shortages. In some cases, land tenure security may provide greater access to credit, directly driving the agricultural investments (including both assets and financial mechanisms such as insurance) that cushion the effects of climatological drivers of crop failure such as drought. These factors encourage smallholders with secure land rights to make longer-term decisions for themselves, their families, and their lands.

USAID is a leader in developing evidence at the juncture of land tenure security and CSA adoption. A follow-on impact evaluation of the USAID-funded Tenure and Global Climate Change Project in Zambia found strong links between land tenure security and increased uptake of Climate-smart Agriculture practices, although it is worth noting that the strength of these links varies geographically. Many CSA practices have long-term payouts that require significant upfront investments. For farmers with insecure access to land, these costs can be a significant barrier to adopting such practices. Farmers will likely avoid the high investment incurred by practices that improve long-term sustainability if they cannot count on benefitting from them in the short-term. Conversely, LRG improvements such as strengthening land tenure and investing in governance of communal resources can provide the scaffolding farmers need to embrace CSA approaches, which, despite their initial costs, can improve soil health, increase biodiversity, and build resilience against climate change, thereby increasing the stability of productivity over time.

USAID works to improve land and resource governance and strengthen property rights in 23 countries globally. In each of these countries, the agency ensures that programming is context-specific and responds directly to the needs of those most vulnerable to land exploitation. In Ethiopia, issues such as farmer-herder conflict and unequal land access for women and youth hinder equitable adaptation to climate challenges. The Ethiopia Land Governance Activity aims to address these issues by strengthening land governance systems, expanding communal land tenure security in pastoral areas by facilitating policy reforms, and creating opportunities for more women to serve in land administration entities. In Colombia, unclear land tenure and property rights obstruct economic growth, generate violence and social tension, and fuel illicit activities that lead to increased deforestation and land-based carbon emissions. By providing access to land titles, supporting land restitution, strengthening local government capacity for land administration, and integrating citizens into licit socioeconomic opportunities, the Land for Prosperity Activity aims to protect members of rural communities from climate and socioeconomic risks.

In El Salvador, Canavalia ground cover is a tenure-conscious component of CRS’ Climate-smart Agriculture: short-term enough to produce results within a growing season, but with long-term value for those with surer land tenure. Nevertheless, Canavalia works best in concert with other CSA practices, including mulching crop residues that often go towards paying rent and establishing trenches or live barriers to reduce loss of soil and organic matter on steep farmed slopes. CRS is exploring alternative arrangements to make these investments possible for tenant farmers, such as through promoting herbaceous live barriers paired with silage training to provide an alternative value proposition for landowners.

Whether through increasing land tenure security or finding creative solutions to increase the feasibility of soil and water conservation on rented land, long-term stewardship can make a substantial difference. The BHA team visited Santos Franco Reyes’ farm in the department of Morazán, which he has owned for twenty years and which he has steadily improved over that time. Despite a 12 to 13 percent slope, the field’s maize plants were growing strong in clearly healthy soil, with ample mulch from the well-pruned trees growing throughout the field and worm-castings every few inches. Santos proudly showed off the infiltration trenches that he had dug to capture heavy rainfall and infiltrate it into downslope maize over subsequent days, telling us he has been digging these for half a decade already. Santos has farmed this slope since his daughter Sulma, standing out with us, was a young girl. As Santos put it, “I do everything I can to make sure this farm is here for her when I move on.”

Cross posted from Agrilinks

Q&A with Diomara Montañez, mayor of Sardinata, Norte de Santander.

The implementation of the Rural Property and Land Administration Plan (POSPR) recently got underway in the municipality of Sardinata, located in Norte de Santander, near the border of Venezuela.

Here USAID is supporting the government of Colombia by survey thousands of rural parcels and providing land agencies with data for land formalization and land use planning. With this information, the National Land Agency (ANT) issues land titles and the national mapping authority IGAC updates the nation’s cadaster.

In this interview, Diomara Montañez, the mayor of Sardinata, talks about the community expectations, the transition to licit economies, and what a property title means to the people of Sardinata.

What does the Rural Property and Land Administration Plan (POSPR) mean to Sardinata?

Land administration falls under the Comprehensive Rural Reform spelled out in the 2016 Peace Accord. The POSPR is an important opportunity for our municipality to formalize all property. For the municipality, it is important, because with all the inputs and information that result from the POSPR we can update the Territorial Land Use Scheme. We want Sardinata to be a pilot municipality, a model in this process.

What does a property title mean to the residents of Sardinata?

A property title is meaningful and it makes people feel more rooted to their land. It also allows property owners to access bank loans and other government benefits. For farmers, land is everything.

How does secure land tenure contribute to the transition away from illegal economies like illicit crops? 

In the long run, land formalization is important for farmers and the eradication of illicit crops. Having their land titled gives them the opportunity to take part in the transition, a process that we have been working on for many years. It is a process to encourage farmers to believe again, to have faith in the national and departmental governments. With the support of organizations like USAID, that hope has come back to our region. With this support, farmers can transition to legal economic activities, and focus on crops like cacao, coffee, plantain, cassava, and sugar cane. Farmers can once again grow food for our entire region and contribute to food security.

What is the latest in this process of transition away from illicit crops?

With USAID Land for Prosperity, in April we made a request to the Substitution of Illicit Crops Directorate in the Ministry of Justice to include Sardinata in the government’s Planting Peace crop eradication policy. Today, we received the news from the Ministry that we were included, and this brings joy to our municipality. This strategy, which coordinates the national and departmental administrations, is important to us because it has the potential to bring significant investments to Sardianata.

The government is designing a transformation strategy for the region that includes Sardinata. What does that strategy include?

Yes, the Agency for Territorial Renovation (ART) is making an effort to find the financial resources to start building a bridge between the village of La Paz in Sardinata and the village of Llanita in the municipality of Tibú. The governor of Norte de Santander is joining this proposal and co-financing the bridge, making the connection of these two neighboring municipalities a reality and helping to transform our region. This bridge will reduce the costs of transport and travel, allowing us to be more competitive. It will benefit hundreds of families, including cassava and palm farmers as well as businesses and the general population. We are very grateful to USAID and Land for Prosperity, because they made the effort and investment to create the studies and designs for the bridge. By the end of the year, we hope to have the financial resources to build this bridge.

How has the USAID-supported municipal land office improved land administration and the sustainability of a formal land market in Sardinata?

The Municipal Land Office (MLO) is another big contribution from USAID. A lot of people have gone to the office to find out information. It also benefits the municipality, because we have public assets like schools, health centers, and other public lands that do not have a land title. Now, with the MLO we can process these properties ourselves and send to the National Land Agency for formalization. With titled assets, we can mobilized public funds and make an even broader impact on the community. The municipal administration will hire one person to streamline these property formalization processes, and we are committed to making sure the land office is sustainable.

Cross posted from USAID Exposure

With USAID support, an Afro-Colombian community received a collective land title, guaranteeing ownership of their traditional lands.

Magic Comes to Life

Central to the oral history of the Santo Madero community is the legend of a miraculous tree that fell in a violent storm only to reappear a few days later, upright and green. The event, which reflects the magic realism that Colombia is known for, has evolved into a vital part of local folklore and is celebrated by the Afro-Colombian community every year.

The roots of the Santo Madero community run as deep as the magical tree, tracing a path hundreds of years back to the mid-16th century when slaves brought to Colombia from Africa, known as the Palenquera diaspora, fled Cartagena and settled in the hills of Montes de María in Colombia’s Caribbean region.

Around 1845, the first Santo Madero families settled the lands of an area known as El Paraíso, located in the municipality of San Jacinto, Bolívar. Today, the Santo Madero community is home to more than 430 families, or 1,350 people.

Amilcar Rocha, who is the current leader of the Santo Madero Community Council, knows firsthand how the community’s ancestral territory plays a crucial role in their cultural identity, economic stability, and environmental stewardship.

“For black communities, the ancestral territory is an ancient issue that was not born in Colombia. The Colombian government has to guarantee land rights so that Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities can maintain their culture and carry out their traditions,” he explains.

Rocha witnessed how hundreds of people from his community were displaced by violence in 1999, and he helped shape Santo Madero’s initial request for a collective land title with the Colombian Institute of Rural Development (INCODER). Drawing on the experience of Colombia’s most famous Afro-Colombian community in the town of San Basilio de Palenque, he was hopeful that in 2010, the government would respond to their request for a collective land title.

“Six months turned into 14 years, because in Colombia, these procedures are a little longer than what the norm says. And since the implementation of policies here depend on the political will of the government, they did not do it,” Rocha explains.

Protecting their Culture

Santo Madero is nestled in the Montes de María region of the Caribbean where thousands of people were caught in the conflict and subjected to extreme violence and massacres. For more than a decade, residents regularly faced threats and extortion, leading to the loss of income and jobs based on agriculture and prompting many to search for a new life in nearby cities. By 2010, many feared that the traditions of the Palenque diaspora would be lost forever.

Those who returned to their lands attempted to process individual land titles by joining Colombia’s land restitution program. Rocha continued to advocate for a collective land title to ensure the community’s integrity, since under a collective title, the land cannot be purchased.

“We wanted the collective title to maintain the unity of our territory, to avoid being displaced again, and to avoid land purchases. I knew that if we were divided, eventually people would come to buy our land,” says Rocha.

A Different Type of Miracle

Q&A with José Hernández, founder of SumaPaz Foods

In 2018, José Hernández, the founder of gourmet exporter SumaPaz Foods, discovered the secrets of Colombia’s sesame in the hills of Montes de María in the Caribbean region. In the municipality of Córdoba Tetón, SumaPaz began working with families involved in sesame for generations. In 2023, USAID’s Land for Prosperity Activity facilitated a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) that includes SumaPaz, government agencies, and over 600 families from the region.

The PPP is valued at nearly USD $1.8 million and its objective is to increase production and processing of artisanal sesame, promote organic certification, and establish sustainable market channels, especially in high value markets like Europe and the USA.

This year, the producers obtained organic certification, which resulted in the export of 10 containers of high-quality sesame to buyers in the European market. Through this model, SumaPaz can pay prices producer higher prices. In this interview, Hérnandez talks about the impact of the PPP.

Why is the future of organic sesame so bright?

In Colombia we have special water and biodiversity conditions, and we want to preserve this wealth. We also have communities with a lot of needs, and this natural wealth can improve their quality of life. We believe that the best way to protect our ecosystems is to produce food organically.

What did you find in the Córdoba Tetón municipality, in the Bolívar department?

Six years ago we visited this region and the community leaders for the first time, and they told us that during the armed conflict sesame was the food they survived on. When the armed groups arrived, the first thing they ate was the cows and the chickens. So then the communities started to produce milk, butter, and everything else just from sesame. They invited us into their homes with a huge heart and gave us sesame milk, a delicious product that can compete with any vegetable milk in the market.

Why is the sesame of this region special?

Colombia has different ecosystems and microclimates that give food different nuances and flavors. For example, our sesame is very well liked in Germany, where they want a sweeter and less astringent sesame for baked goods. It also works very well to make oil. The chapter of Colombian coffee has already been written, but right now we are writing the chapter on Colombian sesame.

What role is the Public-Private Partnership playing to improve the sesame value chain?

The partnership solved some social problems among these producer associations. For example, there were disagreements between the Sesame Federation and the La Fe Association. But with USAID’s support, they understood that it was better not to fight between them but rather work together. The social fabric of these communities is broken after all the violence, and it is only now starting to be repaired. USAID has a structure to work with these communities and to build trust among them.

Why is USAID’s support important?

Having USAID support is important for the people’s mentality and to position our product. Most importantly, having USAID as a partner opens doors with the Colombian government to institutional entities that can really help, like SENA and Agrosavia.

How do you see the market for organic sesame in the future?

We can grow. The European market is growing and we also want to look to the USA. According to our analysis, we have the capacity to export at least 2,000 metric tons per year right now. This year, we could export 350 tons, or 18% of our annual capacity. And if one day we manage to produce and export 2,000 tons, by then the demand would have probably grown even more.

How does the PPP improve the provision of agricultural services in an isolated municipality like Córdoba Tetón in Bolívar?

We received a lot of help from USAID. Integra was formed, which is a group of young agricultural engineers and agronomists with experience in this region, and they helped us with the organic certification process. As a company, Sumapaz covered all costs and also paid for the farms that are under our name. And since we are based in Bogotá, it helps to have Integra located in the same municipality.

Looking to the future, how do you plan to increase the capacity of the producers?

Our focus is on working towards sustainability, but that sustainability is only possible if there is an entire value chain working properly. Our hope is that in 10 years we can give the business back to the communities. We would be completely satisfied if we could see them being independent, not just as farmers but as business owners. That is real change. They would be autonomous and run their own businesses, carry out all logistics processes, and maintain the relationships with the buyers. They are amazing farmers, but they haven’t had the opportunity, and now it is our responsibility to give them that opportunity.

Cross posted from USAID Exposure