How the farm looks like at the moment

The farm is huge. We were told it consists of two parts. One were about 100 hectares and is mostly pasture and the other were about 160 hectares of mostly forest. During our initial visits with the rented horses we did not have the time to explore it all. As the land has not been used for farming of any kind not all parts can be accessed easily. To really explore it all would take many days. So we looked here and there to get a general feeling about what the land is like.

This picture was taken from a hill. What you see is close to the entrance to the farm. You can see there is pasture but a lot of young trees have sprung up. The larger trees are great as they provide some shade, which is important for cattle in the tropics. Humans don't want to spend all day in direct sunlight and neither is good for cattle. So all those little trees except a few larger ones that will soon provide shade will have to be cleared to turn this part back into the grazing land it was before.

Here is the actual entrance to the farm. There has been a dispute between the neighbor and the person who used to live and work on the farm. As a consequence there is a wire fence without a gate. To gain access one has to open up the wires and later twist them back into the prior position. Takes a few minutes to do so. We got the neighbors permission to use that entrance again and cross his land. Without that permission the only access to the farm would have been on a zipline over the river. That's what the other person used in the end before he left. A zipline might work for humans but it won't for cattle. Talking about this issue with the neighbor was an important thing to do after we found out about it.

Which reminds me of something ... Unlike other parts of the world there are two type how one can possess land. One is titled property. Titled property gets registered with the government and it belongs to the person or company who's name is written on the official title. It's real property in the true sense of the word. You own it, you can do on it whatever you like and you can sell it without any restriction.

Then there is public land for which people or companies can aquire what's called "rights of possession". I won't go into the history of rights of possession but only explain briefly what it means. To start with rights of possession doesn't mean the land is owned by someone. It's not private property. It stays property of the government. Anyone who wants to work on the land and finds a nice not yet used parcel can simply start working there and earn his right of possession by occupying the land and using it for some kind of agriculture. There is no paperwork required but one can register his rights of possession at the regional office of a government entity called "reforma agraria".

The farm is such rights of possession land. It has not been surveyed, which is typical for rights of possession land, and therefore the actual size is unknown. The 100 and 160 hectares figures for both parcels are rough estimates and it is unknown to us who came up with those numbers.

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