In a meeting with the governor of Meta, Rafaela Cortés, I felt clear about the urgency of undertaking projects that transform the reality of her department; a region of livestock culture with other development options to continue a successful process of economic and social incorporation of its people.
At the meeting, which I attended with businessman Carlos Patiño, we presented a transformative project that, based on silvopastoral livestock farming, incorporates Cacay as an additional source of income. The proposal is not only to call for livestock investment, but to develop a social project that is a reference at the national level.
The Cacay is a tree endemic to the Amazon, from whose fruit an oil used in cosmetology is extracted, competing with an exotic Moroccan product, argan oil, known as “liquid gold” due to its high price.
The formula of associating livestock with Cacay, with properties superior to those of the Moroccan product, and greater utility/ha/year, found echo in the governor, not only for the transformations for the benefit of victims, mothers who are heads of families, indigenous people and peasants, but as an option that boosts the regional economy without losing its livestock vocation, creating a cluster that develops this productive association and ventures into cosmetology with an Internal Rate of Return of 20%.
The proposal that we presented with Carlos Patiño, CEO of Arlés, a company dedicated to the cultivation and transformation of Cacay, could be a pilot for transformation in territories that today are the kingdom of coca and could be the kingdom of Cacay.
The cards remained on the table. The first: land. Carlos Patiño would donate 600 hectares for an associative project, a process in which the National Land Agency will intervene.
The second: technology. In the silvopastoral issue, Fedegán makes available its 20 years of technical knowledge and its international recognition in sustainable livestock production. In the agricultural sector, the Rural Development Agency will participate in accompanying the delivery of land.
The third: “social financing” from Finagro, which refers to the transformative objective of the project and its productive times, taking for granted that, if the leadership of the Meta Governorate is joined by the National Government, international cooperation is possible. Morocco, where three million people live off argan, obtained financing from the Green Climate Fund, with 49 million dollars to plant 10,000 hectares of argan.
Colombia can do the same with the silvopastoral livestock + Cacay “combo”, as a transformative option to generate a rural middle class that promotes the peace of rural development with legality.
The ace up the sleeve is always political will. The governor of Meta has it and she will call the National Government to send a message YES WE CAN transform forgotten Colombia.
*President of Fedegan
id: 9
