Bogotá, July 23 of 2026
The most recent analysis by the Territorial Development Monitor, titled “Coal and Harvest Share the Road,” concluded that the planted area in the five municipalities of the Cesar mining zone and the eight municipalities along the railroad corridor connecting the mines to Drummond Port in Magdalena, the company’s area of influence, grew by 28.5% since 2013, more than double the 12.8% increase observed in the rest of the country during
the same period.
The Territorial Development Monitor is an independent platform led by Jaime Arteaga & Associates, with the participation of Sociométrica, which compiles, integrates, refines, and updates historical information on more than one hundred development indicators for all municipalities in the country. For this analysis, each of the 13 municipalities was compared with territories of the same type and department.
The five municipalities in the mining area have approximately 51,000 hectares planted and account for 23.2% of the agricultural area of Cesar. Four of them plant at or above the level of their peers: Agustín Codazzi reaches 4.8 times the median of its counterparts; Becerril, 2.1 times; Chiriguaná, 1.2 times; and La Jagua de Ibirico, 1.1 times. El Paso, in contrast, shows a ratio of 0.4 times.
“These results show that mining and agriculture can advance in parallel in the same territory. At Drummond, we will continue working to contribute to the development of a productive, diverse, and sustainable region,” stated Carolina Riaño, Senior Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer of Drummond Company.
The agricultural vocation is also evident along the railroad-port corridor. Its eight municipalities account for 104,200 hectares of planted land, while the six Magdalena territories located along the railroad line concentrate 53.4% of the department’s total cultivated area. The median area of the corridor is three times the area and 3.9 times the
production of its comparable areas.
Zona Bananera leads the results, with a planted area equivalent to 13.9 times the median of its peers. It is followed by El Copey, with 5.7 times; Aracataca, with 4.4 times; and Ciénaga, with 3.4 times. The agricultural basket of these territories includes palm oil, bananas, coffee, corn, and rice, among other crops.
Integrating both groups, the 13 municipalities within Drummond Ltd.’s area of influence total 155,100 hectares of planted land. According to the study, 11 of these territories are at or above the level of their comparables, confirming that coal production, railroad transport, and agriculture share the same geography.
Thus, the data show that agricultural activity maintains a significant presence in the analyzed territories and continues to expand in the Cesar mining region, confirming that productive coexistence is increasingly consolidated in the territorial dynamics of Cesar and Magdalena.