09:01 AM
Farmers Antioquians have received this month just over 1,900 hectares of land and more than 400 hectares will be distributed to them in the coming days by the national government.
Most of the properties were delivered in the municipality of Caucasia, in the Bajo Cauca subregion, where the National Land Agency (ANT) distributed 1,384 hectares to 12 families. The beneficiaries were those affiliated with the Baluarte and Somos Tierra organizations.
Similarly, in Yondó, a subregion of Magdalena Medio, 511 hectares were given to 40 families from the Association of Peasant Agro-Mining Families of Southern Bolívar and Antioquia, among them victims of the armed conflict.
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“Many of us suffered displacements with our families and today we are fulfilling the dream of returning to the land and having something of our own to plant food and life,” said Dairo Gómez, representative of the beneficiary farmers.
For his part, the director of the ANT, Felipe Harman, indicated that the properties to be allocated are productive lands that will be used for food crops, livestock and animal husbandry.
Apart from that, according to the official, in the coming days the ANT 428 hectares will be delivered in Arboletes and San Pedro of Urabá, bringing the total to 2,200 hectares in this crusade, in which the land placed in the hands of farming families in the country totals 8,000 hectares. To date, according to Harman, more than 104,000 hectares have been purchased within the national government’s agrarian reform program.
However, this flagship bet of the Petro government has had deep controversies, based on the figures it has managed. Initially, he set the goal of buying three million productive hectares from the large landowners to give them to the farmers, but then he had to lower his expectations by half.
In addition, columnist Aurelio Suárez recently published in Semana magazine the results of an investigation he conducted with lawyer Eduardo Mestre, according to which between August 7, 2022 and February 21, 2024, the ANT acquired only 80,648 hectares for agrarian reform.
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Suárez points out that “the slowness of purchases is the least problematic.” “The analysis detects violations of Law 160 of 1993, speculation, unproductive and floodable lands, possible front men and lack of payment to bidders.”
In addition, there have been strong contradictions between the information given by the former director of the ANT, Gerardo Vega, with his successor and with the Minister of Agriculture, Jhenifer Mojica, but not only in relation to the figures, but the media dispute has reached complaints of alleged irregularities in the purchase of land during the time Vega was at the head of the agency.
