Video: landslides and cocoa farming in the Andes

Chocolate and landslides: an inspiring visit to a cocoa farmer in Colombia showing his recovery from a devastating landslide caused by unpredictable weather.
This video could be used by teachers to support lessons about weather, environment and agriculture, with particular focus on developing countries. Students may also find it interesting to see where chocolate comes from, what the cocoa fruit looks like and how it’s processed.

In this video I visited a Colombian subsistence farmer whose river-side crops were swept away by a flood and landslide. Among the many effects of global warming is the local disruption of natural weather patterns. To a farmer, this translates into either not enough water over too long a period or too much water all at once.
The small watershed featured in the video suffered from too much water all at once: one night, a liquid avalanche consumed the small town of San Vicente de Chucurí in the Santander province of Colombia. Dozens of small landholders instantly lost their livelihoods as their crops - mainly cacao - were swept away and replaced by rubble, mud and rocks.

I made this short video while working for Rare. At the time I was a programme manager in Rare LatinAmerica’s Watershed Programme. My duties included training and mentoring groups of local conservation leaders striving to change the way farmers in vulnerable watersheds worked their lands.
Thanks to Rare’s signature ‘Pride’ programme, myself and my colleagues were able to train our local heroes in the use of powerful social marketing techniques to achieve lasting behaviour change that benefits natural ecosystems and also the people living in them.
Thanks to this project, Don Cristobal, interviewed here in the video, was able to turn a disaster into an opportunity.