FARC Guerrilla Ex-Combatants and the Emergence of Food Markets as a Strategy for Peacebuilding in Colombia

About 50 years of warfare came to an end in 2016 with the signing of a peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla, kicking off a process of collective reintegration into Colombia's legal system for FARC ex-combatants. The political violence in Colombia has had a detrimental impact on food security, with most of Colombia's food insecure population living in marginalized rural areas where the armed conflict is most severe (Delgado, 2019). Efforts to recover and promote food systems in post-conflict scenarios have been studied from the perspective of state institutions, international organizations, and development cooperation agencies. There is, however, a gap in the research on food system transformation from the perspective of rebellious subjects participating in Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) processes. Although FARC guerrilla had a foundational agrarian program that is reflected in the peace agreement's policy agenda, and connects to current discussions on food sovereignty and cooperativism, they have not traditionally been involved in developing food policies. While the FARC was largely a rural guerilla, it also maintained a significant clandestine presence in urban and peri-urban areas. These interactions have changed and are now addressed in the contemporary urban-rural linkages currently reshaping the food system. FARC ex-combatants are now developing peace projects, many of which are centered on food-related initiatives, in an effort to reintegrate into a society that they intended to reshape via the use of weapons. This paper focuses on the emergence of food markets and their interaction with peacebuilding contexts from a rebel perspective, as well as how such markets seek pathways to sustainable food systems.