A Colombian bill designed to spur agricultural exports has come under attack by critics who say it will legalize an unjust and environmentally damaging transfer of land from small-scale farmers to monocrop growers linked to right-wing paramilitary groups. At issue is the Rural Development Law, approved by the Colombian Senate in December and now before the lower house, or Chamber of Deputies. Proponents say the bill is needed to boost cash-crop and forest-product exports, calling it the country’s most important farm bill of the past half century. But environmental groups charge the bill would leave illegal, right-wing paramilitary groups with vast tracts of land they have taken by force from Indian, Afro-Colombian and peasant farm communities over the last... [Log in to read more]