When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

You've reach your limit of free articles.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime.

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Ad-free experience NEW

Exclusive international news coverage

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Monthly Access

30-day free trial, then $2.90 per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch
EL ESPECTADOR

Organic Food Finds Niche In Megalopolis Bogota

A Bogota-based NGO is helping some 30 farmers to sell organic produce directly to consumers. An oasis of clean food in the face of rising agrobusiness dominance.

Market stalls in Bogota
Market stalls in Bogota
Laura Dulce Romero
BOGOTA — There may be hope for organic farming in Colombia — a country that otherwise appears to be increasingly in the grip of big agrobusiness and vast food imports from the European Union.

Jairo Leal, a 58-year-old cultivator living outside the capital, is one of the faces of this newfound hope. "I have been a peasant all my life. I know how to farm," he says. And by that, he means "without pesticides".

When they tell him insects could harm his vegetables unless he sprays them with chemicals, he says: "so let them die."

He expands on his philosophy: "Crops are like life, at the end of the day: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But I know one thing: you can even win something from your losses." He notes that he uses spoiled crops to feed his animals, which then produce manure to allow him to replant his organic crops.

Leal has been an organic farmer for almost 12 years, cultivating 50 types of produces on five hectares he owns in the district of Fusagasugá. It may seem a lot for a small plot, but Leal uses "crop rotation" and effectively uses every inch of his land.

Leal and his wife, Judith Pineda, are now part of an initiative called La Canasta (The Basket), which helps some 30 families produce organic — pesticides and chemicals-free — food to sell in Bogota and the surrounding department of Cundinamarca.

La Canasta's approach is to help create a direct link between producers and customers, and more respectful relationships with the land.

Daniel Jiménez, a spokesman for the network, says it makes weekly deliveries of organic food on Wednesday to the homes of clients, who can register by phone or through its website. The baskets distributed to clients range in prices depending on the plots they come from (the most expensive is roughly 20 euros), and include "surprise" and seasonal products. The price you pay includes the cost of transport and training for producers.

More than money

Jairo Leal says there are two ways of keeping his plants free from pests or fungus, when he finds them. One is by hand and the other by spraying the juice of other plants onto them, including horse's tail, a natural pesticide.

Still, the reality is that a relatively small minority will farm this way in Colombia: "The mentality has changed," says Leal. "Now farmers just want money and to be sure their crops come out well and in abundance, with or without chemicals."

Sitting outside their small green cottage, he declares that the Leal-Pineda family doesn't want to become "millionaires," but to live a dignified life, respecting consumers who deserve to eat healthy food.

Judith tells me the couple used to farm with pesticides, but changed when they got tired of having to scrub everything thoroughly to cleanse it of chemicals. "It is also a question of honesty. There has to be a stricter control of what we eat. People eating fruits and salads in Bogota are often ingesting poison," she says.

The precarious conditions for farmers in Colombia are no secret, particularly after a massive rural strike in 2013 that brought to light their difficult conditions, not to mention the rock bottom prices wholesalers pay for their produce.

Adriana Chaparro, an expert in the rural economy and organic food market, says that there remains no government support for organic farming. We contacted the governor's offices in the Cundinamarca department, and were told by its agriculture department that there were "no specific projects in this area."

Another problem is the absence of a healthy eating culture among Colombian consumers, who think organic food is just pricey food. Jairo Leal accuses the government of focusing its resources on the expansion of big mining rather than organic farming. The earth, he says, is "the essence of this country, which is degraded by its own greed."

Still, despite broad support, the couple takes comfort in knowing they are doing the right thing, as La Canasta takes their produce from their basket straight into people's kitchens. This is a chain, they tell us, that is now unbreakable.

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Geopolitics

Senegal's Democratic Unrest And The Ghosts Of French Colonialism

The violence that erupted following the sentencing of opposition politician Ousmane Sonko to two years in prison left 16 people dead and 500 arrested. This reveals deep fractures in Senegalese democracy that has traces to France's colonial past.

Image of Senegalese ​Protesters celebrating Sonko being set free by the court, March 2021

Protesters celebrate Sonko being set free by the court, March 2021

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

PARIS — For a long time, Senegal had the glowing image of one of Africa's rare democracies. The reality was more complicated than that, even in the days of the poet-president Léopold Sedar Senghor, who also had his dark side.

But for years, the country has been moving down what Senegalese intellectual Felwine Sarr describes as the "gentle slope of... the weakening and corrosion of the gains of Senegalese democracy."

This has been demonstrated once again over the last few days, with a wave of violence that has left 16 people dead, 500 arrested, the internet censored, and a tense situation with troubling consequences. The trigger? The sentencing last Thursday of opposition politician Ousmane Sonko to two years in prison, which could exclude him from the 2024 presidential elections.

Young people took to the streets when the verdict was announced, accusing the justice system of having become a political tool. Ousmane Sonko had been accused of rape but was convicted of "corruption of youth," a change that rendered the decision incomprehensible.

Keep reading...Show less

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

You've reach your limit of free articles.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime.

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Ad-free experience NEW

Exclusive international news coverage

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Monthly Access

30-day free trial, then $2.90 per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch

The latest