Agriculture in Colombia

Plant cultivation and livestock production have continuously abandoned subsistence agricultural practices in favour of technological farming resulting in cash crops which contribute to the economy of Colombia.

The share of agriculture in Colombia's gross domestic product (GDP) has fallen consistently since 1945, as industry and services have expanded.

Predominantly the indigenous people cultivated maize and managed the Colombian climate and geography to develop planting technique using terraces.

The indigenous people also were avid hunters and consumed processed local fauna, predominantly deer, rabbits, snails, fishes and birds.

The Spaniards then turned to violence, domination and submission of the indigenous peoples, forcing most of them into slavery based in systems like the encomiendas.

It also introduce agricultural plants such as cotton, coffee, sugar cane, tobacco, tea, sorghum, wheat, with the same purpose of supplying Spain solely.

[3][4] After the independence the criollos in Colombia received the support of the United States and other countries to begin trading as a free nation with other countries under the principles of liberal capitalism, the nation however, struggled socially and politically engulfing in numerous civil wars throughout the 19th Century, leaving the countryside and the agricultural production at the same level the Spanish colonial rule had left it.

Other policy instruments have included minimum price guarantees, import quotas, subsidized credits and tax exemptions, campaigns to promote consumption, incentives for new investments and for forestry plantations, and more recent exchange-rate or currency-hedging options.

That fund has generated resources to tackle five major issues: sanitation, commercialization, research and development (R&D), training, and promotion of consumption.

It incentivized the development of infrastructure, fueling the construction of roads connecting areas of cultivation to the distant coasts, as well as a railway system.

[9] Furthermore, the cultivation of coffee on smaller-scale farms allowed for the growth of a robust middle class composed largely of local producers.

However, the rise of larger multinational corporations such as the United Fruit Company in the twentieth century proved difficult to compete with.

[9] Since the middle of the twentieth century, however, its relative importance has been decreasing, largely as a natural outcome of the country's development process.

Women account for 60 percent of the workers in the flower industry, and their terms of employment are favorable in light of Colombia's overall labor markets.

Flowers are produced by 300 companies on 600 farms, 20 percent of which are owned by foreign investors, located mainly in the Bogotá savanna and the Rionegro region in the department of Antioquia.

[5] The Colombian Association of Flower Exporters (Asociación Colombiana de Exportadores de Flores, or Asocolflores) represents Colombian flower producers and exporters on trade policy and legal issues, mainly with the policy makers of Colombia, the United States, and the EU.

Given the importance of the EU's banana market for Colombia and for Latin America, the outcome of the continuing disputes at the World Trade Organization (WTO) with regard to quotas and tariffs is a major issue to this sector.

In November 2007, the WTO ruled against the dramatically increased duties imposed by the EU on its imports of Colombian bananas in January 2006.

Plantains are less important than bananas as a Colombian export but have a larger output share, representing 5.2 percent of agricultural GDP in 2006.

[5] Sugar production, which represented 2.5 percent of agricultural GDP in 2004, is concentrated in Valle del Cauca Department and is based on sugarcane output.

[5] About half of Colombia's sugar output is exported, one quarter is used for domestic consumption, and the rest is sold as an input to the industrial sector.

[5] Government policies aimed at lowering dependence on fossil fuels and reducing pollution have boosted the production of ethanol derived from sugars.

[5] Oil-palm tree fruits, soybeans, cottonseeds, and sesame seeds are the main sources of Colombian vegetable oils.

Colombia is a net importer of all of its vegetable oil needs except for oil-palm tree fruits, which grow in many regions of the country, including the departments of Meta, Cesar, Santander, Nariño, and Magdalena.