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How does corporate agriculture profit from conflict in Colombia?
· 45 min
Episode How does corporate agriculture profit from conflict in Colombia?
Colombia is one of the most unequal countries in the world regarding agriculture and land ownership. Violence in the Colombian countryside has often allowed corporate agriculture to displace land once held by small farmers, known as “campesinos”, and transform it into new frontiers for capital.
Jaskiran Kaur Chohan tells Alasdair that “armed conflict undermines the productive systems of campesinos, which reinforces the corporate food regime and the modernisation of agriculture”. They discuss how corporate food regimes take root in the aftermath, and how the country's smallholders can survive.
Dr Kaur Chohan is a political ecologist at the University of Bristol, whose work focuses on rural communities in Colombia and the intersection of violence, conflict, and agriculture.
Further reading:
• 'Violent conflict, capitalism and insurgent food sovereignty', The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2026 • 'Have monopolies broken agricultural markets?', The Land and Climate Podcast, 2025 • 'The corporate food regime in conflict zones: Armed violence and agriculture in the Zona de Reserva Campesina-Valle del Río Cimitarra, Colombia', Geoforum, 2024 • 'Sugar cane is eroding Colombian biodiversity', Land and Climate Review, 2024 • 'Tough Tradeoffs: Coca crops and agrarian alternatives in Colombia' , International Journal of Drug Policy, 2021 • 'Slow violence and corporate greening in the war on drugs in Colombia', International Affairs, 2021 • 'Zonas de Reserva Campesina: ¿Estrategia de Desarrollo Regional y contra el Desplazamiento?', Mama Coca, 2020 • 'Grassroots masquerades: development, paramilitaries, and land laundering in Colombia', Geoforum, 2013 • Broken Republic: Three Essays, Arundhati Roy, 2011
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Links in the notes 10
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2026.2617431
- https://www.buzzsprout.com/1695859/episodes/16876376
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718524001738
- https://landclimate.org/sugar-cane-is-eroding-colombian-biodiversity/
- https://europepmc.org/article/MED/33612352
- https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/1/57/6041484
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259089506_Grassroots_masquerades_Development_paramilitaries_and_land_laundering_in_Colombia
- https://www.penguin.co.in/book/broken-republic/
- https://www.buzzsprout.com/1695859/fan_mail/new
- https://www.landclimate.org/
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