Two months ago, President Gustavo Petro was in an area of the Colombian Caribbean eating a fish stew prepared by a women’s association just before speaking of the national emergency due to the long rainy season. Since the day the state of emergency was declared on November 1, the government has said that the La Niña phenomenon is threatening the country’s food security, either because many crops are being flooded or because many roads are damaged and food is not getting to several regions can reach . The government insists that part of the short-term solution lies with the women’s groups who make these sancochos: the country’s communal pots. Then on December 28 he announced that 117 billion pesos had been allocated to fund about 600 community pots to feed 60,000 homeless people. Since Petro estimated in November that the rains would continue until February or March, it was decided that the money should arrive in the pots by that third month of this year. But now there is an initiative in the Ministry of Agriculture that could support them much longer after the rainy season has ended.
Community pots are civic initiatives where a small group of people donate various foods and their cooking time to feed their community or vulnerable groups. You can make a sancocho de gallina, an arroz con pollo, or a sumptuous plate of beans, but the pot also has a social purpose: cooking and eating together brings communities closer together. When the pandemic began in early 2020, pots stepped up and many people unable to work were left without food. They multiplied even more during the 2021 protests: the pots took to the streets, feeding hundreds of protesters and vulnerable groups who found a hot plate of food. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that a quarter of the population in large cities in Colombia cannot eat three meals a day.
“The first line would not have lasted even a week without the support of the community pots,” Director of the National Network of Community Pots, Rudolf Solano, told EL PAÍS. The organization brings together 51 community pots in 17 of the country’s 32 departments. During the 2021 protests, Solano says there were three: 157 pots. He explains that community pots are usually short-lived: without stable institutional support from the private or public sector, they depend on the will of a group of citizens wishing to donate a few ears of corn or a few bananas. That’s why there are only a few who manage to hold their own in the long term.
“We’re very pleased that the government is paying attention to community pots, because Colombia is a country where food is plentiful but many people don’t know how to get it,” adds Solano. “And we think it’s very valuable that you see us as part of the solution to the rain emergency. But it is also difficult for them to only look at us in emergency situations, because we are not alone in this, we also build a social fabric and contribute to peace in the areas.”
Solano knows the government, through the National Risk and Disaster Management Unit (UNGRD), is already funding at least 91 pots in areas hit by extreme rains in the Colombian Caribbean’s departments of Cauca, Antioquia and the flood zone of La Mojana. As the director of the UNGRD, Javier Pava, explained to EL PAÍS, in order to receive this support, the organizations had to present to their unit the number of people they could feed and if they met the transparency and hygiene standards, they received one Budget by the number of people they feed.
The first pots to receive government funding in late December are in La Mojana, where the government wants to implement agricultural and environmental reform but has met opposition from several cattle traders. There, in the municipality of Magangué, Gina Guerrero is the director of the Association of Entrepreneurial Women of the Township of Pansegüita (Asomujep), a group of 23 women who now cook 120 or 130 breakfasts and lunches a day for victims.
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“This is the first time we’ve made a community pot, but with this government initiative, we saw an opportunity to support the community because there’s actually a lot of crops lost here,” says Guerrero. “And the truth has been of great impact because there used to be a kit here that lasted 2 or 3 days, but now there’s a three-month food guarantee and hopefully we’ll be backed up later with a second part of the project.”
The community pots consulted by EL PAÍS have very different budgets depending on how many people they feed: some may have approved 18 million pesos for three months, others 135 million for the same quarter. Resources are delivered in bi-weekly payments and verified by the UNDGR.
Although the initial target was winter’s victims, there are more vulnerable populations that need a hotplate. Yolanda Dajomé led her first pot this Friday along with 14 other women in the Roberto Payán community in southwestern Colombia, where several armed groups are present. “We were expecting 60 people, 85 have arrived. Many people have been affected by the clashes throughout the community, I think the majority were people displaced by violence,” he explains. Winter has cut off the community from the streets, but food insecurity is not only caused by rain but also by violence. “We are driven away by the violence and the winter wave,” he adds.
The Petro government has managed to temporarily win over the palates of hundreds of people with these subsidies, and there is an initiative for the pots to last a little longer than the winter emergency. Rudolf Solano, the director of the National Network, told EL PAÍS that they had two meetings with Agriculture Minister Cecilia López to “formalize the community pots and gardens in the country”. The details of this formalization are not yet known, but López spoke briefly about the issue on La W radio in late December. He doesn’t want to “lose the feeling that it’s the community that is making the effort” to cook, he said, explaining that the government wants to appropriate these initiatives. But she added that the president has insisted on finding out how the pots could be backed and that she already sees what might soon be proposed to Congress.
Solano is optimistic. He says the possibility of community pots sustaining long-term resources is on the table. He also says that the minister “puts soul, life and heart into this project”. The idea is to have a draft by the end of January, share it with different groups in February, and present it to Congress in March. By then, according to the forecasts, the rain emergency will be over. But Petros Sancocho to strengthen his network of community pots in the long term is only just beginning to boil.
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