An official source informed that Colombia will grant property title to 10,000 families who abandoned cocaine cultivation in three departments in the southwest of the country that account for 40% of these crops.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which in November signed the peace deal after 52 years of confrontation, agreed to dissociate themselves from the drug business, the main motor of the armed conflict since the 1980s.
This situation has worried the cocaine producers of departments in southern Colombia, such as Cauca, Nariño and Putumayo, where almost half the country’s coca is grown, because it is one of their main sources of income and until now the guerrillas were in charge of preventing its eradication.
Miguel Samper, director of the National Land Agency (ANT), said that the legalization of the land is absolutely fundamental not only in the face of post-conflict, but also in order to reactivate the countryside as an engine of the national economy.
The ANT plans to distribute 7 million hectares to peasants who are linked to the program, out of which 3 million are going to be taken away from criminals because they have been controlled by drug traffickers, guerrillas and paramilitary groups.
One of the incentives for farmers is that 90% of illicit crops in the country, which are not in protected areas, are in non-peasant land and they will become their property if they abandon the cocaine cultivation.
The government and the FARC agreed on a crop eradication and a substitution deal, which foresees that this year 50,000 hectares will be cocaine-free plantations.