14-year-old Colombian uses social media to promote the work of peasants

Published on : 10/28/2021 – 6:41 PM

Carlos Alberto Díaz Colmenares is a young Colombian aged 14, who lives on a farm located in San Francisco, in the department of Cundinamarca, about fifty kilometers from Bogotá, the Colombian capital. He started living there in 2020, a few months after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, when he previously lived in an apartment in La Vega, a neighboring municipality.

“The work in the countryside is hard, as we have seen : it must therefore be valued and supported “

This farm has been in my family for over 20 years, so we used to go there regularly before the pandemic, and my parents have always had knowledge of working on the farm. But we decided to go there more often from May 2020, two months after the start of the lockdown, because it was already easier to get out at that time. It was in poor condition, so we refurbished it until the end of July, and little by little, we settled there with my family.

With the pandemic, other people have left the cities to return to the countryside. I think it showed that you can be happy and live peacefully in the countryside.

In July 2020, Carlos Alberto Díaz Colmenares started producing videos about working on the farm with his older brother Juan, who films him. They publish them in particular on the Instagram account “La Granja del Borrego” (“The Lamb Farm”), which has more than 281,000 subscribers. Some of their videos have hundreds of thousands of views. He explains :

We released our first video on July 9, 2020: we had started sowing seeds, including tomatoes and cucumbers, in a nursery, and we filmed the whole process to see if people were interested in it. We thought the video was going to be seen less than 50 times, but it ended up being very successful. [Elle compte plus de 10 000 vues, NDLR.] We then continued, although at first I was shy because I was not used to being filmed.

^{_{The first video produced by Carlos Alberto Díaz Colmenares and his brother was posted on the Instagram account “La Granja del Borrego” on the 9th July 2020.}}

We try to produce quality videos: we want to teach people things – for example, I share what I learn on the farm – while making these videos funny.

^{_{In this video, Carlos Alberto Díaz Colmenares explains how to prevent the hens from eating their own eggs.}}

_{^{Here, Carlos Alberto Díaz Colmenares exposes three common mistakes when it comes to making compost.}}

“The peasants regularly lose what they grow, in particular because of bad weather, whereas they depend on it to live”

In my eyes, the most important thing is to show that work in the countryside is hard, as we have been able to realize: it must therefore be valued and supported.

For example, about three months after we sowed tomato seeds and worked to make them grow, all of our crops were damaged by fungi. However, the peasants regularly lose what they grow, in particular because of bad weather, whereas they depend on it for a living.

To support the farmers, it is in particular possible to buy their products directly from the markets, at a fair price, because the products sold in supermarkets are not always bought at a correct price from producers.

^{_{In this video, Carlos Alberto Díaz Colmenares shows that we must value the tomatoes that we eat, because of all the work behind it and the difficulties to which Colombian peasants are regularly exposed. : floods, droughts, armed groups …}}

That said, in our videos, I try to show that we can also have a lot of fun in the countryside, especially with animals. In addition, I try to raise awareness of environmental protection, by giving ideas to act in a more sustainable way.

We try to make some money with the videos that we also post on Youtube, but we’re not making much at the moment.

^{_{In this video, Carlos Alberto Díaz Colmenares organizes “Farm Olympics”, having fun with his dogs.}}

^{_{Here, Carlos Alberto Díaz Colmenares gives advice on living a more sustainable lifestyle, such as eating less meat or having your own vegetable garden.}}

Currently, Carlos Alberto Díaz Colmenares is taking courses at a distance, from the family farm. In the medium term, he would like to sell the products of their farm and other local producers in Bogotá, at a fair price. In the longer term, he would like to study animal health.

In Colombia, around 32% of the inhabitants consider themselves to be peasants, according to a study by the National Administrative Department of Statistics. The majority of them consider themselves “poor”, always according to this Department.