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Land seizures behind Colombia's biofuel revolution

Oliver Balch and Rory Carroll

Farmers driven out as armed groups profit. Lucrative crop less risky than coca.

ARMED GROUPS in Colombia are driving peasants off their land to make way for plantations of palm oil, a biofuel that is being promoted as an environmentally friendly source of energy. Surging demand for "green" fuel has prompted rightwing paramilitaries to seize swaths of territory, according to activists and farmers. Thousands of families are believed to have fled a campaign of killing and intimidation.

Several companies were collaborating by falsifying deeds to claim ownership of the land, said Andres Castro, the general secretary of Fedepalma, the national federation of palm oil producers.

"As a consequence of the development of palm by secretive business practices and the use of threats, people have been displaced and [the businesses] have claimed land for themselves," he said. His claim was backed up by witnesses and groups such as Christian Aid and the National Indigenous Organisation of Colombia.

The revelations tarnish what has been considered an economic and environmental success story. The fruit of the palm oil tree produces a vegetable oil also used in cooking, employs 80,000 people, and is increasingly being turned into biofuel.

"Four years ago Colombia had 172,000 hectares of palm oil," President Alvaro Uribe said. "This year we expect to finish with nearly 400,000 hectares. Four years ago Colombia didn't produce a litre of biofuel. Today, because of our administration, Colombia produces 1.2 million litres a day." Investment in new installations would continue to boost production, he added.

However, the lawlessness created by four decades of insurgency in the countryside has enabled rightwing paramilitaries, and also possibly leftwing rebels, to join the boom.

Unlike coca, the armed groups' main income source, palm oil is a legal crop and therefore safe from state-backed eradication efforts.

Farmers who have been forced off their land at gunpoint say that in many cases their banana groves and cattle grazing fields were turned into palm oil plantations.

A government investigation reportedly found irregularities in 80 per cent of palm oil land titles in some areas. "If there have been abuses and the titles are shown to be false, then the land needs to be returned and all the weight of the law needs to be brought down on those that are responsible," said Dr. Castro of the producers' association. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

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