AGROSAVIA and the Youth of Balsillas Write a New Story in the Colombian Countryside

• From resistance to sowing: When a young person decides to stay, he or she not only roots his or her life in the territory but also plants the seed of change. It is a sense of belonging that springs from love for what is one’s own and from the firm belief that a new dawn is rising in the countryside.

 

Florencia, Caquetá. November 13, 2025. In the green pulse of the Colombian Amazon, where the land holds memories of struggle and resilience, lies Balsillas: a territory that has forged its identity between conflict and hope. Located in San Vicente del Caguán, in the northwestern part of Caquetá, this township (corregimiento) stands as a living testimony of peasant resistance and peacebuilding rooted in the foundations of the community.

Balsillas is not just a geographic point; it is a symbol of dignity and sustainability within the Peasant Reserve Zone of El Pato and Valle de Balsillas. Here, the defense of rural life and harmony with nature are present in every project, in every young gaze that chooses to honor its roots and cultivate a prosperous future, from and for the territory.

Amid the green mountains and dirt roads that weave the resilient geography of this land, a breath of future has arrived. Corporación colombiana de investigación agropecuaria – AGROSAVIA, together with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, came to this corner of Caquetá, not as a visitor, but as a sower of optimism. Beneath the vast Amazonian sky and within the classrooms of the Rural Educational Institution Guillermo Ríos Mejía, the National Strategy for Rural Youth took root. It was not merely a transfer of knowledge, but an exchange of trust: home gardens sprouting as promises, irrigated by a micro-sprinkler system; vermicompost production as a strategy for organic farming; broiler chicken raising symbolizing autonomy; and pig farming projects that speak of livelihood and sovereignty.

This work is not just installed infrastructure; it is a legacy of deep roots. An ecosystem of learning where belonging will sprout and love for the countryside will mature, so that knowledge transcends the classroom and new generations may write, with skilled hands, the next harvest of progress on their land.

This alliance did not come to teach, but to learn alongside the community. It came to strengthen what already existed: youthful ingenuity, peasant strength, the desire to remain in the territory. With innovative techniques and close accompaniment, it promoted not only food security but also the empowerment of a generation that now looks at the countryside with pride and possibility. It achieved the articulation of technology with traditional knowledge, allowing hope and attachment to the land to flourish.

Here, AGROSAVIA did not distribute manuals; it cultivated dreams. No lectures were given; engines were ignited. And in every furrow, in every grain, in every young person who decides to stay, the true change grows: the rootedness that springs from love for one’s own and the certainty that the countryside, too, is the future.