El Valle, Chocó, is a corregimiento of Bahía Solano located 40 minutes from Ciudad Mutis, the municipal seat. It is nestled between the Serranía del Baudó and the Pacific Ocean, surrounded by sublime beaches and black families that harbor joy and friendship with all its visitors.
60 years ago, El Valle used to be a territory rich in rice cultivation and production. However, the lack of machinery and modernization ended up reducing the workforce dedicated to this activity, causing a decrease in planting and local production.
This cereal represents 60% of the diet of its population and currently the community has a commercial dependence on intermediaries to be able to consume it.
It is to this type of needs that the Rural Development Agency bets to achieve food sovereignty. That is why today 35 rice-growing families receive the start-up of a rice mill and an electric dryer, which will allow them to dry the rice that they used to air in an artisanal way on sacks in the streets of the town. In addition, the project also contemplates the delivery of boats for the commercialization and collection of its planted product in the middle of the jungle, and that previously was transferred in wooden canoes.
Luis Pinillos, a beneficiary of the project, says that one of the great advantages of this grain grown in El Valle is that it is a clean rice that does not contain chemicals, that it comes from totally fertile lands and that the same drying and threshing benefits its quality, making it almost like brown rice.
These families will be able to start again to supply local commerce, made up of restaurants, hotels, stores, supermarkets and also by organizations that are present in this territory, they will also have managerial support for a year for their productive strengthening.