‘Bringing in’ Colombian smallholders is a key theme in the current global agri-food landscape. Food importers and global finance and governance institutions are keenly aware of the pivotal role that small-scale agriculture can play. In other words, the ‘integration’ of small farmers would secure more consistent and more strategically timed entry of high value food produce into ever-expanding food markets.
Within this global context, smallholders theoretically have an opportunity to enter such supply chains and maintain successful family businesses, enabling them to live better. While there is enormous untapped potential. The reality is often different, not least because the value inherent in family productions is extracted and does not make its way back to those who produce.
The global dynamic described above is relevant – in one form or another – to many rural locations across the world. This article highlights an emblematic case of small-scale avocado production in Colombia, one of the Latin American countries that rapidly increased its avocado exports to Europe and China.
Antillana avocados in the Colombian Caribbean
Montes de María is a strategically located sub-region in the Department of Bolivar y Sucre. It is a traditionally agriculturally diverse area of high biodiversity. The area is known for its production of livestock, maize, rice, cassava, yams, bananas, tobacco, coffee and the Antillean variety of avocado.
The Antillean, or West Indian, variety is one of the three original avocado races from which the commercial Hass cultivar derives (Knight and Campbell 1999). The internationally lesser-known Antillean variety has a unique taste and serves as the base for a wide variety of dishes and derived products including skin care, medicine, spices and fine wood. Unfortunately, however, few of these unique and beneficial products see the light of day because most of the avocado produce in Montes de María leaves the region in simple jute sacks.
To Cartagena by hoof, wave and wheel: the route of the avocado
In Montes de María, the production of the West Indian variety of avocado has been pushed toward the more marginal inland areas, which are difficult to access. The more centrally located fields have been bought up for the production of palm oil and more readily traded varieties of avocado, like the Hass variety, which is cropped in monoculture patterns. Up in the hills, however, the family farmers, which are largely of afrocolombian and indigenous Zenúes origin, continue to cultivate the Antillean avocado in mixed orchards.
The route to market is long and fragmented. Julio, a day labourer hauling avocados, comments: ‘I transport avocados with mules and then afterwards via speedboat, which carries the produce and drops it in La Torre de Playón [‘Hago el acarreo de aguacate a través de mulos y luego a través de las lanchas que traen las cargas y puesto ahí en La Torre del Playón’]. At El Playón, a mid-point in the route, the dayworkers sell their sacks of avocados, which contain around 50kgs, for 60.000 Colombian pesos each. This is the equivalent of around sixteen dollars, or around fourteen euros. The work itself is intensive and involves additional costs.
In general, I [can] bring out 20-30 bags of avocados in one day, using four to five mules. I bring them to Puerto Mesitas and from there they are sold. The guys who operate the boats charge 2,000 pesos per boat load for bringing the goods to La Torre de Playón.
-Julio, a day labourer
Lost opportunities
In spite of the invaluable contribution that variable agronomic practices make to biodiversity as well as the avocado’s potential as a base product, the family-run plantations in Montes de María are largely unsupported. The University of Antioquía has long sought to address this lack of provision by developing an educational programme tailored to the realities of the rural communities (Pedagogía en Ruralidad y Paz). The University has a long-standing working relation with the region’s peoples, who – because of five decades of conflict – have been deprived of social, cultural and economic opportunities that are found in the cities. Through the reinvigoration of territory and its communities, opportunities for peace and social stability are created. In this context, it becomes clear that harnessing the value of a globally prized product like the avocado has a potential that goes beyond the realization of a fair price.
Transnational capital and connection: what can be done?
International political economy studies the connections between transnational businesses. In particular, the interactions between companies and organisations from perceived ‘central’ areas and local elites in other places are studied, in order to understand how alliances are formed. Subsequently, and largely as a result of the historical orientation of the discipline of English and American political science, the question of whether a global state is emerging is actively explored. This lens, however, misses the potential of other less predictable, more diffuse and potentially more disruptive forms of connection and alliance, such as those immanent in Montes de María.
As the trend for smallholder incorporation continues, there is an opportunity to influence the conditions under which potential “win-win” situations may materialise. Alliances between universities, responsible businesses, and consumers and producers have the opportunity to support a rural support programme like that of the University of Antioquia. While the issues involved are complex, there are many mutual benefits that may be realised through international and inter-organisational cooperation. These include the facilitation and support of consumer-producer networks; the creation of joint action plans on living wages and living income; making contributions to recognising value in less narrow ways; and the development of brands and labels that support and reinvest in communities. Supporting such initiatives not only holds the potential to fulfill mutual interests, it also strengthens community capacity – and by implication Colombia’s national capacity – to direct its own future development.
All photos taken by Justa Hopma & Nestor Daniel Vargas
