Over the past decades, Colombia’s dominant agricultural vision has been that of becoming a food powerhouse: a nation that could “feed the world”. However, while Colombia’s exports of some tropical produce have increased, this expansion overseas has not led to improvements in the living conditions of the millions of people in rural areas who still experience poverty and food insecurity and malnutrition. Agrarian movements have long sought to put forward alternative visions of the food system under the narratives of i) feeding the nation and ii) feeding the village. These alternative visions are based on a more localised approach to agriculture and food consumption that values aspects such as people’s proximity to food production, protection of local environmental resources, urban-rural links and the importance of promoting rural and urban well-being through healthy diets. This essay explores the tensions between these alternative visions of food provisioning. It is written by Dr Felipe Roa-Clavijo, Assistant Professor at the School of Government of Universidad de Los Andes.