Smile Paipa, you're on TV!

Thanks to Manuela Gomez Salgado, reporter at Noticias Uno, I had the chance to participate to a press trip to one of Oxfam main development projects in Colombia. Destination of this mission was Paipa, a small town in the Boyacá province.

People depicted in photographs (apart from media officers) are campesinos benefiting from the Oxfam's Alternative Economics initiative, which supports local farmers in growing healthier and more diverse crops, and selling them directly to consumers at fair market prices. Beneficiaries receive small funds to increase their crops' extension, and specific training to cultivate using only non-chemical fertilizers and cattle feed, according to their grandparents' techniques.

The project helps small-scale farmers earn more for their produce, while also helping ensure the availability of good quality food at affordable prices in cities. Apparently, newly re-introduced techniques increased not only the quantity, but the quality of the final product as well.

Now, for your information, a small introduction to Colombia and the so-called Rural Uribism

In Colombia, campesinos and small farmers face threats that goes from the lack of resources to access the market (land, education, health), until the limited access to technical assistance, credit and similar.

Difficulties to access land ownership include rent, distribution and entitlement-related problems: 59% of poor rural households do not own any land; in fact, there's a strong concentrating trend in the land ownership, and heavy deficiencies in entitlement management.

To tackle this issues the Colombian government adopted in 2007 a special sectorial credit policy known as "Agro-Ingreso Seguro" (AIS). Through this instrument, the government was subsidizing with special interest rates local producers. Instead of representing the solution tho campesino's problems, this policy revealed the impressive level of corruption and concentration of resources in few hands: 55% of beneficiaries received less than 1 million COP (4.812 US$); 78% received up to 10 millions (4.182 US$); on the other hand, the 1% of beneficiaries (that is to say 4 organizations and/or individuals) acceded to more than 500 million COP (240.616 US$), which is the 46% of the overall outflow.

The entity of this failure is even clearer considering that small producers represents the wide majority of agricultural producers in the country (87%) and produce around 40% of the Colombian overall basic food basket. Notwithstanding this, campesinos currently live with an average monthly income of 130 US$.

Full sources (in Spanish) are available under request.

Welcome to Paipa

Corpus Christi = Christ Corp.

No, this time it's not a yurta...

He insisted that stuff was small...

Again: that vegetable could contain at least a dozen of chihuahuas...

View of the landscape in Boyacá province

Reporter at work

The gigantic stuff (I don't recall how it is called)

Interview in the fertilizer's enclosure

Colombian riders

Interview in the vegetable plot

The "Tomate de arbol" (Tamarillo or Tomato tree)

Colombian hospitality calls for a freshly made Colombian coffee ("tinto")

Detail of the patio garden of a farmhouse

Drinking tinto in the patio garden

Narcoleptic cats

Detail of the patio garden of a farmhouse

Detail of the patio garden of a farmhouse

Detail of the patio garden of a farmhouse

Coffee time

Still nature with coffee cups

Hats

Media at work

Consultation with household was useless: no idea what this thing is

The president of the local campesinos cooperative

Old-fashion bargames

Narcoleptic dog

El gato sin verguenza (the shameless cat)

Now you know why he was called The shameless cat... He really tried to steal some milk in front of everybody


Pre-operational briefing

Moving to the next household

Relic

Some sort of utility room

Too tender...

...but this is even better!

You don't want to know what is this

A non identified coward animal (truth is, I don't remember the name)

Farmer's best friend

Feeding chickens

Stealing eggs...

I am cool, what about you?

In the crops

Busted!

Feeding the pig

Products exposed

During the interview

A streaker rushes in during the interview! (AKA Photobomb!!!)

Still nature through a glass

Paipa's lake

Manuela, the intrepid report

Kids playing in front of the cathedral of Paipa

A campesino guitar-player

A campesino god knows what-player

In front of the Cathedral

Kid from Paipa

Kids from Paipa

Colombian geometries

Campesinos ready to dedicate a song to the Minister of Agriculture

Live, on Noticias Uno!

Here Simón Bolívar won the decisive battle in which Latin America acquired its definitive independence from Spanish Monarchy (Battle of Boyacá)

Boyacá Bridge. The battle occurred here, some 150 km from Bogotá in the Andes Mountains, in a place known as Casa de Teja, close to a bridge over the Teatinos River