Zipaquirá’s Food Bank Turns Waste into Hope for Colombian Rural Families

In the mountains outside Bogotá, shelves of near-expired yogurt and surplus bread are quietly fueling a revolution. Zipaquirá’s Food Bank now reaches 3,500 campesino families a month, proving hunger is less about scarcity than about will and logistics.

Where Tourism Glitters, Hunger Waits

Visitors pour into Zipaquirá to descend into the famous Salt Cathedral—tour buses lined up, guides waving flags, camera flashes bouncing off salt-carved walls—just a few streets away, another kind of choreography unfolds, unnoticed by tourists. Inside a warehouse that smells faintly of flour and bananas, volunteers sort bruised tomatoes from fresh ones, seal boxes with tape guns, and steer pallets toward daylight.

Here, the city reveals its other story. Forklifts load food that would otherwise rot—yogurt nearing expiration, day-old bread, cereal boxes dented in transit. Each month, those sacks are carried into villages where hunger is rarely spoken aloud. “The welcome is always one of hope,” priest José Alejandro Quiroga, pastoral director of the food bank, told EFE, describing the scene when trucks arrive: elders waiting under the sun, mothers balancing toddlers, neighbors passing packages along a human chain.

A Warehouse of Second Chances

Less than a decade ago, Zipaquirá’s Food Bank was small, serving just 500 families with a handful of staff. Today, it supports nearly 3,700 families, thanks to a pandemic-era alliance with Colombia’s national network of food banks, Ábaco, and a widening circle of donors. PriceSmart and Makro deliver surplus daily; bakeries send bread still warm from yesterday’s ovens.

Administrative director Lida Plata, who postponed retirement to lead the effort, insists the focus is deliberately rural. “We are rural, completely rural: Ninety-five percent of our niche is campesino families,” she told EFE. That mission shifts the definition of luxury. When a donation yields boxes of cereal, chocolate, or snacks, children in remote hamlets taste them for the first time—an edible glimpse of a country they only see on TV. Families who can contribute pay a token amount—between 42,000 and 180,000 pesos ($10 to $45), far less than supermarket prices. Those who cannot are covered by a sponsorship scheme: another family donates 15,000 pesos, so their neighbors receive the same bag. “We guarantee deliveries whether donations arrive or not,” Plata emphasized. With Ábaco backstopping inventories, every package includes staples—such as rice, beans, oil, and pasta—and hygiene supplies.

Markets That Travel Mountain Roads

Each bag carries more than food. It carries time—time that lets children remain in school instead of joining parents to hustle for work. It carries predictability in a countryside where climate change has disrupted the old rhythms of farming. And it carries dignity.

In Villa del Rosario, a modest neighborhood where a wooden church anchors the community, 43 families unloaded a recent delivery. No speeches marked the occasion. People lifted sacks onto their shoulders or strollers and disappeared quickly, not out of indifference but out of pride. “This cannot be paid with any money in the world,” Plata told EFE, her voice catching as she recalled how families who have almost nothing still offer food or coffee to volunteers.

The national math is stark: Colombia wastes 9.7 million tons of food each year, while 14.4 million people face food insecurity. Every truck that transforms surplus into supper underscores the point: hunger is not a shortage of food, but a shortage of distribution and determination.

Beyond Food, a Net of Trust

Geography makes the work harder and more necessary. Rural zones once defined by self-sufficient harvests now face droughts, floods, or the presence of armed groups that disrupt planting and transport. To keep deliveries steady, the food bank leans on people, not just trucks. Each parish depends on local leaders who manage lists, collect contributions, and ensure those most vulnerable are reached.

Social worker Diana Orduy often finds herself dealing with crises no food package alone can solve. “I have had to accompany tough situations,” she told EFE, recalling households where both health and hygiene had collapsed. In those cases, the delivery is just a start. “We try to help in the most integral way possible,” she said, connecting families to clinics or municipal services. In this way, the food bank becomes a hub for community triage, escalating problems that even local authorities had overlooked.

The contrast is jarring: tourists crowding the cathedral’s underground splendor, while only a few hills away, families rely on discreet monthly bags to make ends meet. Economic recovery and hunger coexist, often separated only by a bend in the road. The bank’s answer is not glamorous but relentless: gather, sort, pack, drive until the pavement ends, and deliver dignity one bag at a time.

A Modest Revolution on a Clock

Everything runs on urgency. Yogurt carries a date on its lid, bread hardens within hours, and fruit bruises overnight. Trucks must outrun spoilage across Andean switchbacks. Volunteers solve dozens of minor problems daily so families don’t face impossible ones.

Since the pandemic, the food bank’s growth feels less like expansion than adaptation. Zipaquirá’s hospitality industry draws millions of visitors, while the food bank practices another kind of hospitality—no tickets, no turnstiles, only quiet dignity. This is not charity for show. It is logistics as justice.

Asked what sustains her, Plata described the silence after a truck leaves: no applause, no speeches, just pots clattering back into use, children opening a box of cereal they’ve only seen advertised, neighbors knocking on doors with shared portions. That silence, she said, is complete.

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If a country is measured by how it treats those at the end of dusty roads, then these markets—built from yesterday’s bread and tomorrow’s hope—set a standard worth meeting. In Zipaquirá, waste has been recast as resilience, and hunger’s silence turned, if only for a while, into relief.