In one of the most important agricultural pantries in the country, the Cundiboyacense plateau, a young social worker has viralized dozens of peasants and artisans, promoting their crops and products through social networks. With his work, he has not only managed to favor them economically through direct sales to the consumer, but has also exalted rural culture and contributed to closing the social gap.
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The precarious conditions of many peasant homes is the reality with which Andrew Guerreros, the creator of the project, faces daily. He currently works at the Secretary of Agriculture of Boyacá, so he knows first-hand his needs and shortcomings. But he doesn’t watch them from the sidelines. His family is also of rural origin, which is why he understands and identifies with this population.
In his approaches to the community, Andrés discovered that one of the obstacles that contributes to the scarce development in the field is the limited access to technologies; both agricultural – to technify their work – and communications. Based on this difficulty, he decided to be the voice to connect him with the rest of the country and make visible trades and customs that globalization tends to relegate.
For this purpose was born I am a farmera Facebook and Instagram account that started two years ago with few followers and now accumulates hundreds of thousands, the vast majority of them young, who were seduced by the social meaning of the publications and the trend towards sustainable consumption where local purchases prevail. and care for the environment.
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“We take advantage of social networks to make the reality of the Colombian countryside visible and promote its crops. In this way, a direct link is created between farmers and users, favoring each of the parties; because by skipping the intermediation, the consumer saves money and the farmer sells his products at a fair price, ”says Guerreros.
The page, which on Facebook has an average reach of 30 million users monthly and on Instagram he has 138,000 followers, publishes photos, memes and videos, in which he exposes the stories behind the families that live off the farm. The idea is to settle the debt of a trade that has historically been excluded and now faces the challenge of digitization, a process that can help close the gap or accentuate inequalities much more.
By skipping intermediation, the consumer saves money and the farmer sells his products at a fair price
“We realized that by showing the human side of the Colombian countryside, as a way to also promote their products, we dignified the work. Normally the peasant was and is seen as a second class citizenbut with the work in social networks we have given them the importance they deserve in the first lines of the productive chain”, points out the creator of Soy Campesino.
In its consolidation process, the cause has been adding support. Karen Alejandra Alba, a young administrator, and Marysol Munevar, a journalist, decided to join the project and contribute from their field to the visibility strategy of farmers and artisans. Likewise, thanks to the scope of the account, they currently receive some income from advertising that is used to finance visits to the municipalities, villages and small districts of Boyacá and Santander, departments in which they focus their activity.
Create trends to rescue culture
One of the cases that demonstrated the great impact of the project was experienced in Lebrija, Santander, in September of last year. The soursop harvest was being threatened by the low prices offered by intermediaries and, given the impotence of the peasants, a social leader decided to contact the young man from Boyacá so that he could sell the fruit through the page.
Soy Campesino’s administrator went to the region and recorded a video explaining the importance of buying the product at a fair price and raising awareness of the efforts and difficulties of the households that subsist thanks to it. This content quickly went viral, reaching 10 million viewswhich allowed the harvest to be sold in three days.
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Deisy Ardila, a peasant leader from Lebrija, assured that she still receives calls from people interested in buying soursop or collaborating with farmers. “The economy moved a lot thanks to this page, because the video aroused feelings towards the fruit and the peasant. Never in my life had I received a thousand WhatsApp messages or hundreds of calls from Colombians and people from abroad wanting to buy or help with donations.”
Andrés Guerreros and Karen Alba went to Lebrija, Santander, to generate content that would help sell the soursop harvest, threatened by low prices.
A similar effect was produced by the project in the artisans of Jenesano, a municipality in Boyacá that is distinguished by this trade. Soy Campesino made this ancestral work visible and presented its products, including the wicker basket, as a sustainable, economical, and high-quality alternative. Through a video in which he explained its preparation, it was possible to generate interest in social network users, reactivating the purchase of a craft that, due to its low demand, was being manufactured less and less.
Never in my life had I received a thousand WhatsApp messages or hundreds of calls from Colombians and people from abroad wanting to buy or help with donations.
“Very little was sold before Soy Campesino talked about us. We offered the baskets in the market places, in some other fair and with word of mouth”, says Florinda Moreno, an artisan from Boyacá. “Since the video was published, we have received many calls from interested parties from all over the country. I am not very broad in digital knowledge, but seeing these results I have looked for a way to learn and continue spreading our products through the networks”, he adds.
That is precisely the impact that Andrés Guerreros hopes to generate with the project. As he states, “rather than being the only digital medium in the Colombian countryside, Soy Campesino seeks to inspire all farmers, artisans and other trades to start using social networks, even from a small profile, and generate a positive impact on their community.
Wicker baskets were promoted in Soy Campesino as a sustainable alternative to replace plastic bags. Because of this message they managed to be a trend.
The next step to meet this goal is to teach, through video tutorials, the use of WhatsApp, networks, digital payments and all the logistics to display and sell products online. However, it has encountered obstacles such as technological illiteracy, poor infrastructure and poor connectivity in rural areas, a product of state neglect that its inhabitants have experienced for years.
“As in most of the publications we leave the contact numbers of the protagonists of the stories, they begin to receive a number of calls that are difficult for them to manage and what they do is Turn off the cellphone. Hence the importance of teaching customer service and network management”, says Guerreros.
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Soy Campesino also plans to create a national directory of farmers to facilitate trade in the sector and expand the network of contacts, guaranteeing a fair price for the products. In addition, it plans to create an online store so that users can buy directly and create another sales channel that favors the economy of the field.
Maintaining the interest of the new generations, the key to progress
There is still a long way to go. Without intervening infrastructure failures to facilitate the transport of food, or connectivity to access a mobile network or the Internet, it is very difficult for the project to generate the expected impact and for agriculture to be a competitive and attractive industry for new generations.
“Digital transformation is not directed only to connect with the city dweller, but to maintain the interest of young farmers, who are forced to abandon the trade because they believe it is a very ungrateful job, in which there are no gains and even losses. Older adults are left alone on their farms since their children and grandchildren have migrated to work in the cities,” emphasizes Guerreros.
His vision is not far from reality. A Dane study showed that the country’s peasants are between 41 and 64 years old and there are even areas where the average age exceeds 57 years. Due to this finding, the National Council of Secretaries of Agriculture (Consa) assured that in a decade we will not have anyone to grow food in Colombia because rural youth are leaving.
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Cases such as that of the artisans of Jenesano or the soursop farmers of Lebrija show that the benefits of technology are a driver of social development.
Under these circumstances, projects such as Soy Campesino become relevant, although they do not solve the structural problems of the Colombian countryside, provide tools to expand opportunities in this sector.
SARA VALENTINA QUEVEDO
WRITING THE TIME
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