Dairy Farmers in Colombia: Where Milk Comes Drop by Drop
Oxfam visited farmers on the South American continent to witness the real impact of climate change and El Niño.
By Elena Cornellana, Digital Content Producer at Oxfam.
We arrived at El Vergel, Blanca Salamanca’s small dairy farm, as afternoon slipped into evening. The sunset over the pastures was beautiful despite the dryness across the fields. It was the middle of June, the end of the first rainy season, but there was no trace of rain in Iza, in the district of Boyacá. Instead, dairy farmers were already using water from a small reservoir designed to meet their needs during the dry season. What would they do in one month’s time?
As we met 75 year-old Blanca and her family, she told us that cattle rearing has always been their life. She has six mixed-breed Normandy cows which her son Gustavo is responsible for milking. Aside from his small salary in the building industry, dairy farming is their main source of income.
But Blanca and her family are facing dry times. They have stopped growing corn, potatoes, wheat and peas because all the water they can get goes to their six cows, which only provide three or four liters of milk per day — a half of what they used to produce before. Blanca told us: “We’ve had three difficult years, awful years. It is very sad. Everything is drying up. We can’t sow anymore. The cattle are dying of hunger, they’ve been killed off. What can we do?”
Blanca’s story is just one of thousands happening across Colombia every day. Small-scale producers — many of whom farm on just a couple of acres and own ten cows or fewer — are the backbone of the nation’s agriculture. In Boyacá district alone, the sole source of income for more than 60,000 families is dairy farming. This enables them to feed their families and send their children to school. However, farmers say that climate change is bringing successive droughts that have contributed to a downward spiral of loss and poverty, mostly in the Andean and Pacific regions of Colombia and across Central America.
Every year a periodic heating of the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean takes place — called El Niño — that alters global weather patterns, and has brought drought to inland Colombia and flooding near its coast. Last year’s drought followed by the current El Niño — one of the strongest on record, whose effects will be felt well into 2016 — have put Colombian dairy farmers in a very bad situation. The situation for these farmers is particularly bad this year because of last year’s droughts. Beyond the impact of drought on agriculture, El Niño also increases the incidence of malaria in Colombia (by 17% in an El Niño year and by 35% the year after).
It was pitch dark when we left Blanca in her tiny white house. We spent the following days visiting six other small- to medium-sized dairy farms from different regions and the overall picture was the same: high temperatures and a low volume of rainfall have cut agricultural productivity and increased food insecurity. And while those with additional resources have been able to adapt, the poorest have been left to fend for themselves.
Then we met a couple, Consuelo, 34, and Ramón, 38, from La Paz (Guaduas) who have also been affected by recurring droughts that are becoming more extended and intense, supercharged this year by El Niño. We visited the remains of what used to be their local milk collection center, property of Agrapaz cooperative. The center is now closed because it can no longer compete on price, quantity or quality. They explained that they haven’t received any private or public support and only seven of the original seventeen cooperative members remain. Now, they have no other option than selling their milk to a local cheese maker at a far lower price, which makes repaying their debts impossible.
Ramón explained his most difficult time was last summer: “The ponds dried up so much that the animals got stuck in the mud and died. Twelve cows died and I had to get them out of there one by one. I broke down.”
It was silent for a moment and then Consuelo added: “It makes me sad to think that there is no one supporting us. We are terribly neglected and it shouldn’t be this way. We work very hard, we are very honest and we are just abandoned and left to our own devices. I have three children, but as things stand now, I will not be able to see them continue my work.”
What could help farmers be more resilient to the ravages of climate change? First of all, they need access to new techniques that enable them to adapt their crops and their cattle to higher temperatures and longer dry periods. As Fernando, the owner of an independent medium-sized dairy farm in Guaduas, explained to us during our trip: “The situation is hard. Guaduas has a very warm climate and it gets hotter and drier every summer, which makes it hard for the cows to provide many liters of milk. However, I’ve managed to improve the cattle genetics thanks to an expert assessment. Now I have cows that are adapted to the tropical climate that provide an average of eight liters a day, which is good. I have also started to grow other kinds of pastures such as alfalfa, sugar cane, corn and moringa. All of them are very good sources of protein for the cattle and more resistant to long dry periods.”
However, not many small-scale farmers have either the resources or the access to support to help them adapt their farming to be resilient to these changing weather patterns. That’s why Oxfam is calling on governments to guarantee these resources and access at a national and international level.
Major efforts are required to support vulnerable communities to adapt, and this crisis will be the backdrop to this year’s major international climate change conference in Paris. There, developed countries must demonstrate how they will meet their existing commitments to jointly invest $100bn a year by 2020 for climate action in poor countries. The new international climate change agreement for the post-2020 period set to be agreed in Paris must ensure current pledges of emissions cuts are significantly strengthened every five years, to avoid the worst impacts of a changing climate unfolding in the decades to come, and include a new separate target for adaptation finance that is commensurate with likely climate impacts.
Colombia has shown a strong commitment to the fight against climate change by being the first South American country to submit its post-2020 climate action plan and it also committed $6 million to the Green Climate Fund, aimed at financing the mitigation and adaptation to global warming in developing countries. It is now time for the Colombian government to invest in resilience programs in its agricultural sector and ensure that small-scale farmers have the tools to stand up to and survive the effects of climate change.
World leaders meeting for the UN climate negotiations in Paris this December have the power to show that they will stand with those like Blanca, Consuelo, and Ramón who are least to blame yet most affected by climate change.
We urge them to use the Paris climate talks to start putting those most impacted by climate change first and this includes ensuring that the money to help people cope with climate change is on the way up.
Additional links:
Brazil: farmers facing drought need a real climate deal
Watch the Women.Food.Climate campaign video
Read the Oxfam policy paper on El Niño
Take Action on Climate Change
Discover more stories of inspiring women standing up to climate change
