Sponsor small agro-ecological farmers in Colombia

Within the framework of the Agroecological certification in Colombia called Participatory Guarantee System (SPG), two types of visits are considered; a technical one and a participatory one.  In this case, we visited three farmers to conduct a technical review of the agricultural, livestock, processing and socio-economic dimensions.

The visits were conducted by 3 agroecology engineers from the foundation's team and took place in La Pradera, Subachoque, a municipality located west of Bogota, with which the Sembrando Confianza market has a large participation by linking the market to an agricultural network called Asociación Red Agroecológica Campesina de Subachoque - ARAC (Subachoque Agroecological Farmers Network Association).

These technical visits were carried out in two stages: a general review of the agricultural and livestock components of the property, as well as a review of the spaces available to carry out food transformation and storage processes. In a second stage, five sustainability indicators were applied to seek recommendations for improvement based on the specific characteristics of the entire agroecosystem.

These indicators were developed thanks to the donations received and are focused on measuring the following:

- Profitability of the productive unit
- Level of specific diversity
- Self-consumption index
- Level of packaging technology
- Participation and training

This led to the incorporation of improvements in the agroecological certification process in the Bogotá region. We met with the other certifying organizations and the university UNIMINUTO (the only university in Bogota that teaches a degree in Agroecological Engineering), made improvements on the initial proposal and finally agreed to implement this process of measuring indicators at the level of the region in order to ensure the quality of the process and have more relevant information to present to the national network of family agriculture (RENAF), the entity that legally represents peasant, family and community farmers in the implementation and monitoring of public policies for small farmers in Colombia.

After this visits we made a plan of improvements and recommendations for each farm and ended the certification process for 3 farmers more for the next year and a half.

The next technical and participatory visits are scheduled for August 9, 19, 23 and 30 to certify 6 more farmers.

Thanks to all the people who have donated to this cause, we will continue to improve the quality of life of the farmers through a formal and certified link to the food market in Bogota.