‘We now live without this violence’: the Colombian farmers giving up coca for palm oil

Subsidies and a crackdown on armed groups are helping smallholders rebuild their lives, leaving behind decades of conflict and fear Surrounded by towering oil palm trees on his farm in the small village of Caño Barbú, near San Pablo in northern Colombia , Yoger Payares uses a malayo – a pole-mounted iron tool with a hook – to hack at the fronds of one, freeing a bunch of its vibrant reddish-orange…