3/7/2024
La Guajira will have 79,961 hectares protected for exclusive use in the agricultural sector
The protected areas will be in eight municipalities of La Guajira: San Juan del Cesar, El Molino, Villanueva, Urumita, La Jagua del Pilar, Fonseca, Distracción, and Barrancas.
San Juan del Cesar (La Guajira), (@UPRAColombia, @claudialili76). The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MADR), through Resolution 161,
officially declared the Areas of Protection for Food Production (APPA) in eight municipalities in the south of La Guajira. The declaration establishes that the department will have 79,961 hectares protected exclusively for use in the agricultural sector.
The Unit for Rural Agricultural Planning (UPRA) provided technical support and identified these areas, which are a priority for the State and must be protected as they significantly contribute to the fulfillment of the human right to adequate food.
The 79,961 hectares declared as APPA are distributed in the rural areas of eight municipalities of La Guajira as follows:
| Municipality |
APPA area (ha) |
| San Juan del Cesar | 15.846 |
| Fonseca | 10.519 |
| Distracción | 3.828 |
| El Molino | 9.535 |
| La Jagua del Pilar | 10.571 |
| Villanueva | 14.488 |
| Urumita | 10.238 |
| Barrancas |
4.933 |
Over a year of work, MADR and UPRA frequently socialized the progress and results of identifying the APPA in La Guajira with farmers, associations, territorial entities, and other stakeholders. The producers highlighted the importance of the APPA for each territory.
Excitedly, a producer from San Juan del Cesar (La Guajira), Aimé Zambrano, commented: "We thought this would be the last thing that could happen to us: that they would protect some areas for us; because we are threatened by a mining project that wants to extract coal from our territory."
Additionally, Yesica Fragoso, a producer from San Juan del Cesar (La Guajira), emphasized the effort to reach the territory "to inform communities and their leaders so they can disseminate the information in the territories about how this whole process is being handled, which has opened up space for communities for agricultural development in the territories."
Meanwhile, Marco Díaz Duarte, president of the JAC of the Los Barriales village, noted: "The expectations are many because, perhaps under previous governments, we were completely abandoned."
It is important to highlight that the APPA contribute to the community by helping to ensure the right to food, protecting soils to produce food, promoting the peasant, family, and community economy, and protecting peasant territories.
For the municipality, the APPA also offer benefits such as protecting the territorial planning of rural lands for food production; promoting the production and availability of food to guarantee the human right to food in the territories, and promoting the efficient use of rural agricultural land.
Finally, MADR and UPRA are advancing in other areas to identify APPA in some territories of departments such as Antioquia, Córdoba, Santander, Cundinamarca, Tolima, and Cauca.
