COLOMBIA
Agriculture in Colombia plays a very important role in the economic development of the country, since it is the main source of income in rural areas, makes a significant contribution to economic progress, poverty alleviation, food security and sustainable development.
Curiously, Colombia has a potential of 40 million hectares to cultivate, but it only has seven million (17.5 percent) hectares used.
In turn, Colombian agriculture is very diverse. According to the Bank of the Republic, the main products in the country's economy are oilseeds, coffee, cotton, cocoa, sugar cane, bananas, rice, corn, potatoes and flowers, among others.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Colombia, in the first half of 2022, the agricultural and agro-industrial sector of that country exported USD$6.1 billion, registering an increase of 38.8 percent compared to the same period in 2021, whose figure was $4.4 billion. The agricultural and agro-industrial sector participated with 21.4 percent of the country's total exports in value. The growth of traditional products in exports between January and June continues to be representative: coffee at $2.1 billion (63.9 percent) and flowers at $1.2 billion (27.2 percent).
Agricultural potentialColombia has a potential of 40 million hectares to cultivate,but it only has seven million hectares used.
One of the main challenges facing Colombia in terms of foreign trade is to diversify its export basket, and agricultural and agro-industrial products that are produced in the national territory and have great export potential play an important role here.
To achieve this diversification, Colombia must start by increasing the number of cultivated hectares, since to date the country only has 17.5 percent of crops of its total agricultural potential.
"Colombia has 40 million hectares of agricultural potential, that is its agricultural frontier, but today we barely have seven million hectares planted," says Juan Gonzalo Botero, former vice minister of agricultural affairs of the Colombian Ministry of Agriculture, who adds that “forest plantations, oil palms, onion bulbs
and cocoa are the agricultural products that have the greatest potential for cultivating hectares.”
Forest plantations have 25.9 million potential hectares for cultivation, that is, they have the capacity to contribute 66 percent to the agricultural frontier; oil palm 21.5 million hectares and bulb onion or bighead onion 16.8 million hectares, Botero says.
“Oil palm is one of our strategic sectors and one that contributes the most to our country's exports, today with an export market where a ton of oil stands at more than $1,000, a historic price for Colombia. The bulb onion, which is a crop that is clearly part of the peasant family economy, and the plantations of forest crops can help us grow and also meet the environmental goals of the millennium," notes Botero.
Juan Carlos Pinzón, former Colombian ambassador to the United States, notes "the country has to have the goal of exporting more than $20 billion a year, it is not enough to export $10 billion, but if we return to traditional mineral products, simply we are riding on temporary bonanzas. The great challenge is how to develop the agro-industrial sector.”
Products with admissibility to other countriesOf the 48 admissibility established as goals for the four-year period in the National Development Plan, Colombia not only achieved the objective but has already reached 52 new admissibility within which the Hass avocado to China, Japan and Korea stand out; beef to Saudi Arabia; sour Tahiti lime; cannabis seed to Peru; yellow dragon fruit to Argentina; pineapple to Uruguay; coffee beans to Ecuador; fetal bovine serum and live bovines for reproduction destined for Brazil; and recently paprika to the United States.
The biological revolution key to Colombian agricultureIn Colombia, the use of bioinputs is a tradition of several centuries and finds its roots in Indigenous and Afro-American cultures, notes Marina Sánchez, leader of the agroecology research group at the National University of Colombia (UNAL), Palmira campus. However, despite the long tradition that Colombia has in the use of bioinputs for the field, today these products do not exceed five percent of the total market for agricultural inputs – a low participation that is sought to be reversed at the governmental level due to the global situation of fertilizers and the need to activate new crops with export potential.
"Among the sectors that have promoted the consumption of bioinputs are the Hass avocado, passion flowers, blueberries, bananas, coffee and other export products," says Nicolás Cock Duque, former president and current member of the BioProtection Global board of directors, the international federation of national biocontrol associations. “This growth in agricultural exports is not only due to the issue of residuality; also, because producers are opting for bioinputs as an alternative with good performance”. The organization points out that Colombia has a 4.1 percent share of the Latin American
market, which would add some$35 million in biocontrols in 2020.
However, according to the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), in Colombia there are 2.7 million farmers, of whom 725,000 are residents in the countryside. Among the latter, 16.8 percent do not know how to read or write, 83.7 percent do not use credit to finance their production, 71 percent do not own agricultural machinery, 63.5 percent work plots of less than five hectares and 99.9 percent are natural persons when conducting their business.
In this context, agricultural productivity represents approximately seven percent of the country's GDP, and this forces producers to be aware of how their productivity is affected by pests, diseases, climatic factors and soil malnutrition. Faced with these adversities, bioinputs act as a shield and strategy to potentiate agricultural production from sustainability. The participation of bioinputs in the Colombian market responds to the demand of increasingly responsible consumers, aware of the impact of the indiscriminate use of agrochemicals, as well as customers who require safe food.
Although its use dates back 100 years, bioinputs in the country only began to be regulated since 2004 by the Colombian Agricultural Institute (ICA).
"Bioinputs are not going to eliminate the chemical component, but they will complement the management of agricultural crops to make them more sustainable and in line with market needs," explains Juliana Sarmiento, co-director of Asobiocol (Colombian Association of Bioinputs for the Transformation of Agriculture).
Globally, the share of chemical pesticides in the crop protection market before Covid-19 was 95 percent, compared to five percent for agricultural bioinputs. According to Sarmiento, the projection is that by 2030, bioinputs will cover half of the business, which would result in a more balanced system.
According to the ICA, while in 2009 there were 90 companies registered in Colombia as producers and marketers of bio-inputs, in 2020 the number rose to 235 with a total of
341 sales records available in the market. The participation of this product in the country is three percent compared to chemical pesticides, and 70 percent are biocontrol agents and the remaining 30 percent biofertilizers.
In this sense, the challenges of the industry to massify the use of bioinputs is the awareness of the transformation of agriculture, legal stability for companies, promote biosafety and quality in production, generate synergy between the different entities, encourage policies public and technical training inthe area.
"From Asobiocol we are promoting the transfer of these technologies (bioinputs) to the different agricultural sectors, in order to mitigate the impact generated by the use of chemical pesticides. At the same time, we want to give farmers an alternative to the difficulties that appear; the exit from the market of some chemical molecules due to their high toxicological degree, the scarcity and high cost of fertilizers," indicated Sarmiento.
Asobiocol Asobiocol was launched in 2016 to give visibility and sustainability to the industry. Eleven companies are part of it, among which there are research centres. Several of them export their products. Its objectives are to unify the industry, raise awareness on safety and sustainability issues in the agricultural sector, accelerate technology transfer, and promote an ethical and legal culture throughout the chain.
Members include Agrosavia, Alteo, Bichópolis, Biocultivos, Bioserviam, Ecoflora – Gowan, First, Ibicol, Invesa, Scientia, and STK.
Faced with the players in the bioinputs market in Colombia, there are a number of manufacturers that have supported the initial development of technologies that have proven their effectiveness, relevance and competitiveness. These manufacturers today are able to support or solve a larger portion of the needs that farmers have in terms of organics; that is, they are able to begin to complement or make less critical this very high dependence that exists on synthetic inputs.
According to information from the ICA, in 2016, over 1.5 million kilograms of bioinputs were produced in Colombia, while in 2020, production reached a growth of 80.2 percent with over two million kilograms (646,502 litres of bioinputs).
The numbers are expected to increase. And it is that, according to the 2030 Bioeconomy Plan of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, it is projected that the bioeconomy will contribute 10 percent to the GDP in the year 2030 and that, by that same year, there will be more than 500 bioproducts that include new active principles, bioproducts in pre-commercial and commercial stages, and registration extensions to new national and international markets.
The experts contend some challenges for the development of bioinputs in Colombia exist, including:
Improve the coordination and rules of the game of the institutions that regulate the production and commercialization since otherwise additional times are generated in the procedures and transaction costs that affect the operation of the entrepreneurs. Some point out that a registration process with the ICA can take up to five years and cost between $13,000 to $15,000. Additionally, the import procedures for microorganisms or insects present difficulties associated with environmental licensing, given that until 2022 there was no particular regulation for these. However, a law was recently approved that promotes inter-institutional technical protocols to facilitate these procedures.
Facilitate access to information and education regarding the use of bioinputs, since the traditional farmer expects immediate effects and perceives them as more
expensive. Bioinputs require graduality, their effects can be visible over a longer period of time, and they are more associated with “preventive technology” rather than “curative technology”. As they are living organisms, the type and time of storage is different, as is the application. According to the entrepreneurs interviewed, the costs of bioinputs may initially seem higher, but in the long term, the savings in the production system are considerable.
Manage the artisanal and uncontrolled production of bioinputs that are propagated and sold by companies or organizations without production registration and without ensuring minimum quality conditions. This could spread microorganisms that can be even worse than the pest itself, a situation that has affected the credibility of bioinputs with producers, because by not ensuring the quality and application method, their effectiveness is impaired.
Expand the research and Science, Technology and Innovation Committee (CTI) calls for bioinputs and biological controllers since it has focused on the same problems and solutions: most of the biological controllers that are used are focused on managing soil diseases, but there are few for leaves and fruits. Despite the great biodiversity of Colombia, the biological controllers that are most used in the market are cosmopolitan, that is, they can be found anywhere, and a large part are imported.
In Colombia, bioinputs have made great progress at an institutional, business and technological level, positioning their use in the region. The growth opportunities of this
sector show favourable trends to generate employment, income and bioproducts with high added value. However, there are challenges to move towards a bioeconomy represented in more sustainable agro-productive systems that generate healthy and safe food for Colombians. A more ambitious and comprehensive state policy is necessary to promote agroecological models for small, medium and large producers, promoting bioinputs instead of agrochemicals, with more concrete goals. The integration between the government, companies, academia, research centres and society is essential for this transition.
Precision agriculturePrecision agriculture makes it possible to detect diseases in crops; generate stress maps for plants, either due to excess heat or lack of water and nutrients; collect data in a short time and analyze it to make decisions. In Colombia, the spearheading of precision agriculture is carried out by the sugar mills of Valle del Cauca and other large-scale crops such as oil palm, where modernization has made it possible to save resources, make agricultural production efficient and generate progress in the sector.
Despite the fact that Europe, the U.S. and China are taking leaps and bounds in this matter, the country took its first steps in 2016 with the boom in unmanned vehicles, or drones, and state-of-the-art equipment such as sensors and special cameras applied to agriculture. It is a digital revolution in the field, in which various areas of knowledge converge to make productive processes more profitable and friendly to the environment.
Other uses of precision agriculture include measuring the biomass, or biological mass of crops, to learn the amount of living matter produced by plants, animals, fungi or bacteria, and making optimized spraying of fungicides, fertilizers and nutrients.
However, this wave of modernization is not exclusive to large industries, because through outsourcing of the service, medium and small producers can also access these technologies; So much so that in Valle del Cauca most of the producers subcontract the service, while the largest have systems and large-capacity equipment.
Precision agriculture insugar cane cropsWith a back-mounted pump, like the ones used by workers in some crops – among them sugar cane – 200 litres of water per hectare are used in a low crop. On average, a person can make 10 applications with a physical effort of between six and eight hours, since each pump can only contain 20 litres. In contrast, with a drone, this activity can be reduced to one hectare in five minutes using three liters of water.
Professor Carlos Germán Muñoz Perea, from the Department of Agricultural Sciences of the National University of Colombia (UNAL) Palmira Campus, considers that “before the digital revolution in large crops, supervision, evaluation and sampling demanded a lot of time: in the past it was working with a small sample that was taken on foot because it was impossible to look at the field on a large scale. Now with the use of drones, not only is the behaviour of the plants monitored and evaluated, but pests and diseases can also be diagnosed. We are in a transition in which drones will gradually replace the planes that do the spraying.”
He also explains that “precision agriculture reduces production costs, since before the same amount of fertilizer was applied to the entire lot, while now, with the use of technological devices, differences in soil fertility can be recognized and apply the product according to the needs, which optimizes and saves the consumption of agrochemicals in these crops.”
For his part, Professor Enrique Torres Prieto points out that “with the free market, countries and industries are obliged to improve technology. Digital agriculture must
take place on three axes: 1) it must be productive in terms of profitability, 2) it is called to be friendly to the environment, and 3) environmental policies that are thought of in society mustbe guaranteed.
“With the modernization of sugar cane crops, the worker would no longer have to cut cane as he has been doing, but his trade would transcend the management of the harvesters. Cane burning could also be avoided using environmentally friendly technology, which will result in the improvement of the value chain and the quality of life of crop workers."
Domestic fertilizer production only covers 5% of the demandHistorically, Colombia has been a country that depends on fertilizers and agricultural inputs from abroad. In fact, 95 percent come from countries like Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago; and of those that have bought the most (urea), are Russia and Ukraine.
Hence, Colombia is in the top 20 countries that most depend on fertilizers from Europe. The inability is due to the lack of production of inputs such as potassium, nitrogen or phosphorus, to name a few. Of the two million tons the country needs, five percent comes from local production. According to the Colombian Farmers' Society (SAC), to have a better performance in the field, three million tons wouldbe needed.
This small local production margin has moved slightly in response to high fertilizer prices last year. Costs rose up to 40 percent due to the war in Ukraine, and inventories decreased by around 61.27 percent.
“For the production of fertilizers, we have a naturally organic product that is poultry manure. However, when it comes to entering the national market to see the fertilizers, of those millions of tons that must be supplied, potassium and phosphorus are also needed,” explains Jorge Enrique Bedoya, president of SAC. “For this, it will be necessary to see what dimension the government intends to do in terms of national production, because not all inputs can be produced in Colombia.”
Recent investigations say that in Huila, there may be phosphoric rock mines that can be useful, as well as
green hydrogen exploration, which can boost the development of raw materials for fertilizers. But Bedoya argues that "it must be taken into account that the the investigation is too early to be able to affirm that today there is a substitutionin the domestic market forimported inputs.”
Companies such as Yara and Paz del Río have stated they will increase their local production to offset the deficit. However, as reported by the Bloomberg agency, Nitrofert in Colombia still does not have the capacity to produce raw material components such as nitrogen, potassium or phosphorus in the short or medium term. Yara, the multinational of the agro-industrial sector, assures that the commitment to increase its local production is due to the idea of having a food future.
In the next two years, the company plans to increase fertilizer production at its plant in Cartagena by 30 percent to supply the Colombian market with just over 900,000 tons of fertilizers.
"Currently, at Yara we have production capacities, both for ammonia and calcium nitrate, of which we sell around 800,000 tons of fertilizers per year, which allows us to reach more than 50 percent of farmers in Colombia," affirms Andrés Useche, regional director for the Andean region of Yara.
In Colombia, Yara produces NPK granular complexes, ammonium nitrate-based fertilizers, calcium nitrate and ureic nitrogen.
Yara Colombia launched its fertilizer facility in Colombia in 2018.
In 2022, the company produced around 660,000 tons of fertilizers in the country. In addition, it implemented transfer programs and initiatives to 40,000 local farmers. "In addition, we are the only company that produces nitrate in Colombia, thanks to this the supply of inputs or raw materials for the production of fertilizers remains stable, which allows us to continue supplying the market with local production and imported fertilizers through our network of plants in Europe,” adds Useche.
Paz del Río, a national fertilizer producer, hasbeen increasing its production capacity. The company has started an expansion plan that will allow the supply of fertilizers to be increased significantly, providing “high efficiency products to increase the productivity of Colombian agriculture,” according to César Palacio Martínez, the company's fertilizer manager.
“Paz del Río fertilizers and soil improvers are the result of a circular economy process, in which the extracted minerals, such as steel, return to the earth,” he notes. “Hence, in terms of inputs we are self-sufficient. We produce in Colombia and for Colombia.” He added that “domestic production has grown little and in very few cases has presented some kind of shortage.”
Phosphate rock productionThe National Mining Agency of Colombia assure that phosphates have good mining potential in the country and are a strategic mineral for the development and reactivation of the country's economy.
Phosphoric rock – or phosphates – is a mineral that contains phosphorus and serves mainly as an input for fertilizers, animal feed and industrial uses. Total market demand will grow to 263 million tonnes by 2035, driven by the need to feed a growing world population and by constraints on arable land expansion, which will require higher fertilizer application rates. Colombia is the fifth largest producer of phosphates on the continent, after the U.S., Brazil, Peru and Mexico.
Currently in Colombia, the mineral has been extracted in the departments of Boyacá, Huila and Norte de Santander, with an average annual production for the last five years of 60,377 tons.
During the last few years, the National Mining Agency has been advancing in the reservation of new polygons with potential for phosphates, which are located in the Departments of Boyacá and Huila, based on the potential reports prepared by the Colombian Geological Service.
The diversification of the mining basket is one of the pillars that seeks to expand Colombia's mining productive matrix through various strategies that the ANM has begun to implement, such as mining rounds and the offer of strategic mining areas for exploration and subsequent production.
The government of Colombia has identified the diversification of the mining activity as one of the key pillars of the sector for the economic recovery of the country with strategies that seek to achieve a safe and sustainable mining activity, generating opportunities and wealth for the nation.
In 2012, the Ministry of Mines and Energy determined phosphate as a strategic mineral. According to technical and specialized reports, the country has identified areas with potential for the exploration of phosphoric rock, potassium and magnesium salts, located in the Eastern Cordillera. ●
Biological control hot spotsin Colombia.
Sources: Takumasa Kondo, Colombian Agricultural Research Corporation (Agrosavia), Palmira Research Center, Valle del Cauca, Colombia; Maria R. Manzano, National University of Colombia, Palmyra Headquarters, Department of Agricultural Sciences, Palmira, Valle del Cauca, Colombia; Alba Marina Cotes, Colombian Agricultural Research Corporation (Agrosavia), Tibaitata Research Center, Cundinamarca, Colombia.
Bioinputs will complement the management of agricultural crops to make them more sustainable and in line with market needs.
Colombian coffee farm, Venecia near Manizales.
In Colombia, bioinputs have made great progress at an institutional, business and technological level, positioning their use in the region.
Avocado farm in the mountains of Colombia.
With the use of drones, not only is the behaviour of the plants monitored and evaluated, but pests and diseases can also be diagnosed.
Sugar cane field, Valle del Cauca Region, Colombia
Colombia is in the top 20 countries that most depend on fertilizers from Europe.
Onion field, Boyac, Colombia
