From Watchers to Guardians: The Rural Youth is Weaving a Promising Future for Chiribiquete Supported by AGROSAVIA

Florencia, Caquetá. October 6, 2025. In the vastness of the Llanos del Yarí region, the land unfolds like an ecological poem. This territory is a suspended threshold, a strategic landscape where the Amazon exhales its humid breath and the Orinoquía stretches out its golden mantle. A world of whispering forests, open savannas, mirrored wetlands, and winding rivers that not only shapes the geography but also defines the climate, stores water, and safeguards a living treasure trove of biodiversity. It is on this fertile edge where the lush jungle meets the tapestry of the agricultural frontier that Institución Educativa Rural San José de Caquetanía, El Edén del Tigre campus, stands strong not merely as a shelter but as a beacon of transformation. Here, on the doorstep of the sacred Chiribiquete National Natural Park and in the resonant proximity of the Tinigua and Sierra de la Macarena parks, a seed of the future is beginning to sprout.

This hope is called the “National Rural Youth Strategy,” woven by the hands of Corporación colombiana de investigación agropecuaria – AGROSAVIA and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. Its mission is as deep as the soil it walks upon: to forge, within classrooms, a living barrier against the shadow of deforestation, and finding in the buzz of native bees (meliponiculture), in the flight of honeybees (apiculture), and in the cultivation of life in community nurseries, the most eloquent and powerful strategy to write a new chapter of conservation for the Amazon collectively.

A vibrant example of this momentum was the recent meliponiculture workshop “raising stingless native bees,” where students discovered an unexpected ally. These tiny forest guardians offer a sweet and sustainable economic alternative, proving that standing forests are worth more than felled ones. In the buzzing of these bees, the young hear the murmur of a possible future, where productivity and conservation are not enemies but partners in the task of protecting the majesty that surrounds them. Further, where the agricultural frontier screams with axes and chainsaws, apiculture and meliponiculture respond with a buzz of life. They are the seed of a peaceful and prosperous world, an alternative that grows in harmony with nature.

This corner of Caquetá is not just any territory; it is the line where the future of the Amazon is being decided. That is why every action taken in its classrooms and nurseries transcends the school walls. It is about planting in young people the seed of a new relationship with their land, one based on alternative uses of the forest, on production systems that embrace sustainability, and on community organization. These young people are the agents of transformation who will weave a new future for their territory.

The seed has already been planted. Through an act of resilience and collaboration with the community, an agroforestry nursery was established as part of the National Rural Youth Strategy. Today, this includes infrastructure for the rescue and conservation of forest species at risk due to deforestation. This is a symbol of what can be achieved when the community, the educational institution, the Mayor’s Office of San Vicente del Caguán, SENA, and programs like Visión unite efforts with a single goal: to stop deforestation. From this effort, not only did seedlings emerge, but also capacities: a technician was trained in nursery management and the first experiences in productive systems and biodiversity monitoring ocurred.

In the fertile path of this land, we have found companions in the Yarí Peasant Business Association (ASECADY). This organization of San Vicente del Caguán weaves hope for 346 families across twelve rural communities in the Yarí region. Their shared goal beats with a single purpose: to sow prosperity in their members’ economies through projects that are seeds of change. Among them is the much expected construction of a dairy processing plant, a promise to heal deforested lands and build golden bridges between producers and the industry.

Now, the Rural Youth Strategy arrives like a persistent and generous rain to water these seeds and help them bloom. Its work cultivates along two parallel furrows: in one, the consolidation of the forest species nursery, a green rebirth that springs from the hands of the community; in the other, the sowing of human talent, enriched by CampeSENA’s knowledge in the sweet crafts of apiculture, and by the ancestral wisdom of local experts who, during field days, revealed the secrets of meliponiculture.

Thus, the new generations choose to plant their future in the land where they were born. They no longer yearn to leave but to remain so that their people and culture may flourish together, preserving the legacy of their traditions. This rebirth has an ally: the knowledge-sharing spaces promoted by AGROSAVIA. Under the beacon of science but with hands in the soil, a bridge has been woven with the ancestral knowledge of the inhabitants, demonstrating that true wisdom, the kind that transforms realities, is the one placed at the service of people, forging, from the territory itself, an agricultural development with a human face.