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BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombia’s government has reached an agreement with farm animal breeders to buy 3 million hectares (7. 4 million acres) of land from poor rural farmers to push for land reform to boost food production and fight poverty, the agriculture minister said on Friday. .
“We have reached a general agreement, this is a historic act, the 3rd agrarian reform begins,” Agriculture Minister Cecilia Lopez said in a statement, adding that the agreement will be signed next week through President Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist. chief.
The cost of the acquisition and how it will be financed was revealed.
Petro is pushing for land reform to respond to a component of a 2016 peace deal signed between the then-government and the now-demobilized FARC guerrilla organization that ended involvement in Colombia’s nearly six-decade internal armed standoff that left at least 450,000 dead. .
Last month, Petro proposed converting the country’s medium-term fiscal framework to incur some 60 trillion pesos ($13 billion) of domestic debt to buy land and sell to substandard farmers affected by violence at below-market prices.
The deal comes amid a series of land invasions, which he has condemned.
Jose Felix Lafaurie, president of the Colombian association of farm animal breeders Fedegan, said the deal was reached in less than a month.
“We have reached a wonderful agreement that will bring a lot of tranquility to the rural sector,” Lafaurie said, adding that the agreement will consolidate a rural average elegance that will address Colombia’s food challenges.
The agrarian reform will also provide for the titling of 600,000 hectares allocated to farmers, while another 125,000 hectares confiscated from accused drug traffickers will be leased, the agriculture minister added.
(Reporting through Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing through Oliver Griffin; Editing via Aurora Ellis)