The peace agreement signed by the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla group in 2016 marked a historic turning point for the country and its long history of civil war. The Colombian state agreed with the FARC to carry out a rural reform to ensure redistribution and access to land, the right to food and a boost to the rural economy that would allow farmers to live in dignity. The peace agreement includes commitments to change some elements of the state’s current agricultural and industrial policies, which could raise questions from Colombia’s trading partners about their trade-related implications. This chapter argues that such measures are consistent with Colombia’s obligations under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture and Colombia’s preferential trade agreements. Right to food measures (such as domestic support for small agricultural producers in the 2016 Peace Agreement’s rural reform) are within policy space under the Agreement on Agriculture because they do not affect international trade. Other government policies fall within Colombia’s international trade commitments because they aim to enable a food economy system in which rural communities can harvest their food and build improved productivity networks that meet their economic and social needs. This chapter shows how local attempts to implement a particular agricultural policy are framed within international trade rules.

Proportionality purports to contrast means with ends to decide whether a specific rule breaches the Constitution. The chapter starts by analyzing discussion of the 2016 agreements between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla in the Colombian Constitutional Court, whose justices split over the standard of review to be used to decide the scope of the special legislative powers conferred to the president to implement the Peace Agreement. Part of the Court believed that those special presidential powers were to be scrutinized under stringent standards similar to those applied in judicial review of emergency powers. Others pointed out, by contrast, that those powers were to be deployed not in an emergency setting, but in a transitional one where more lenient standards of review apply. The chapter suggests that this debate between exception and transition illuminates the analysis of how judicial discourses build relations between means – legislative and executive norms – and goals – attaining peace – adding dimensions to the proportionality/necessity framework as a field where judges deploy their powers to exert political control over other public branches. While the Court framed the debate around the concept of “necessity,” Colombian constitutional discussions suggest that necessity and proportionality could even be interchangeable concepts.