Huge tracts of land hold major agricultural potential

Colombia has enormous potential to become an agricultural super power. The country boasts huge tracts of undeveloped land in its interior and, with the proper investment, can become as productive and successful as the development of Brazil’s Cerrado, which turned Colombia’s neighbor into one of the biggest agricultural exporters in the world.

The government has plans to encourage that development, and is working to attract private investment alongside the state spending that will provide potential agricultural areas with the transport and storage infrastructure necessary to move large amounts of food commodities from farms to export markets.

“Colombia has significant potential to contribute as a pantry of food for which there is increasingly strong demand in the world,” says Juan Camilo Restrepo, Colombia’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Colombia’s varied terrain and climate conditions make it an ideal country for growing tropical crops as well as plants that grow better in temperate climates. Colombia’s best known and most important agricultural export is coffee, which grows very well in the country’s warm, rainy, mountainous regions.

‘COLOMBIA HAS SIGNIFICANT POTENTIAL TO CONTRIBUTE AS A PANTRY OF FOOD FOR WHICH THERE IS INCREASINGLY STRONG DEMAND IN THE WORLD’

Colombian coffee is famous for its smoothness and aroma, and commands a premium on world commodities markets. The U.S. buys about half of the country’s coffee exports, but Colombia also sells significant amounts of the beans to Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and other countries.

Other warm-weather crops the country produces – and can produce more of with the proper development – include bananas and plantains, rice, cotton, sugar cane, tobacco and corn. In cooler areas the country’s land is also very fertile and can produce a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and other crops, such as beans, cocoa, wheat, barley and potatoes.

The government recently approved a project that will invest about $450 million in underdeveloped regions to help them take advantage of their agricultural potential. Most of the money coming from the state will be spent to build up the regions’ road networks, while the government expects private investors to step in and invest as the transport conditions improve.

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Investment in infrastructure is another important part of the government’s plans to spur the economy, and all the five so-called ‘locomotives’ of growth will interact with each other to boost expansion further. Another of the government’s most important policies, the redistribution of land to Colombians, will also help encourage agricultural development around the country.

“The distribution of land has a historic opportunity to turn the country into a major player in food production globally, as Brazil is also doing,” says Alejandro Santos, the director of Semana Magazine.