Colombian Minister and Dutch Ambassador held a meeting on agricultural and rural development
Cecilia López, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, and Ernst Noorman, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Colombia, met last September 13th to discuss the progress of the collaboration between the two countries, under the framework of the implementation of the peace agreement with the former FARC guerrilla. They discussed, among other topics, about the further consolidation of the joint work on themes such as land administration, sustainability in value chains, food security and circular agriculture.
Since 2017, the Government of the Netherlands has been intensifying its cooperation with the Colombian Government in the implementation of sustainable agricultural and rural development policies, including actions aimed at supporting programmes on food security, sustainability, and cadastre and formalization of rural property that were included as part of the negotiations of the peace agreement signed with the FARC in 2016.
For Ambassador Ernst Noorman, "the close collaboration with Colombia in the agricultural sector has the potential to be further deepened, for example on issues such as water management in agriculture, the reduction of the use of plastics in the sector, the transition towards feeding animals with insect protein, among others, in which we are already working together”.
Likewise, Minister López and Ambassador Noorman reiterated their commitment to continue and strengthen the collaboration to overcome the regulatory barriers that have prevented further progress in e.g. access to markets for agri-food products, increased sustainability in value chains and the execution of the land registry policy and the formalisation of rural property in the country.
Special attention was given to the collaboration that the two countries have had for more than six years in terms of land administration. The Netherlands Cadastre, Registry and Mapping Agency – Kadaster, has been implementing an innovative methodology for land formalisation in an agile, cost-efficient and participatory manner, which facilitates the recognition of the property rights of the peasant and ethnic communities of the country. This land administration method, known as Fit for Purpose (FfP), has been applied on a pilot scale in several municipalities, in close collaboration with the National Land Agency (ANT), the Agustin Codazzi Geographical Institute (IGAC) , the Superintendency of Notaries and Registry (SNR), and local governments. Kadaster’s activities have also included collaborations with knowledge centres such as Bogota’s Distrital University and the Externado University. To date, more than 200 Colombian families have formalised their property thanks to this collaboration.
