Pubdate: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 Source: Houston Chronicle Copyright: 2000 Houston Chronicle Contact: Viewpoints Editor, P.O. Box 4260 Houston, Texas 77210-4260 Fax: (713) 220-3575 Website: http://www.chron.com/ Forum: http://www.chron.com/content/hcitalk/index.html Author: John Otis, Special to the Chronicle Note: This is the last article in a series. Links to the rest of the series are at the end of this article. OFFICIALS URGE FARMERS TO TRY ALTERNATIVE TO COCA CROP CARTAGENA DEL CHAIRA, Colombia -- To mold fresh rounds of cheese at a tiny dairy, workers put plastic bags full of milk curds on the floor beneath buckets weighted with bricks. It's a shoestring operation, but one with soaring ambitions. Every day, the plant buys milk from local dairy farmers. In an area dominated by the drug trade, the idea is to persuade peasants to stop growing coca, the raw material for cocaine, and to start raising cows. But over the past few months, the factory's sales have tumbled. Production has been scaled back, and milk purchases have fallen from 50 to 20 gallons a day. The problems began when the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the nation's largest guerrilla group known as the FARC, banned area farmers from selling coca paste, a crude form of cocaine made from coca leaves. The FARC, which controls the area, claimed that drug buyers entering the region were spies. The decree, which some believe was a rebel ploy to gain greater control over the cocaine market, has thrown Cartagena del Chaira and neighboring coca boomtowns into an economic tailspin that is taking its toll on legitimate businesses. "When coca is bought and sold, more money circulates. But when coca sales are paralyzed, so is everything else," says Ana Daisy Laverde, who manages the dairy and has laid off 23 of her 30 part-time workers, all wives of coca farmers. The plant's roundabout dependence on the drug trade reflects the complicated landscape of alternative development, a small but key element of the U.S. counternarcotics strategy for Colombia. The $862 million U.S. aid package that was recently approved for the country sets aside $81 million for alternative development. Japan, European nations and international lending institutions have promised millions of dollars in additional funds for the program. Designed to be the humanitarian face of the war on drugs, the concept of alternative development originated in the 1980s in Thailand and Pakistan, where rural-aid programs sponsored by the United Nations helped replace vast expanses of opium poppies with legal crops. Until recently, officials in Bogota and Washington had little hope that crop substitution could work in Colombia, mainly because left-wing guerrillas control many of the country's drug-producing regions. Last year, U.S. aid for alternative development in Colombia totaled just $5 million. However, aerial fumigation of narcotics crops -- a centerpiece of the Colombian drug war -- has pushed waves of peasants deeper into the jungle, where they are growing more coca than ever. That development led to a change of heart. "We need to get rid of the coca, but we also need to be providing alternatives" for farmers, says an aide to Colombian President Andres Pastrana. Oddly enough, the FARC, which earns up to $500 million annually from the drug trade, is lobbying for crop substitution projects. Members of the rebel organization recently met in southern Colombia with representatives of 21 nations to push for foreign funding. Critics claim, however, that the rebels have no real interest in reducing Colombia's coca and opium crops, since they depend on drug income to finance their war. Instead, they charge, the FARC has embraced alternative development to get its hands on millions of dollars in international assistance and to dispel its "narco-guerrilla" reputation. Legions of coca farmers say they would embrace legal crops if they could. But in deep rural areas -- where there are no banks, little technical support and few, if any, roads to get food crops to market -- many say that coca is their only option. The plant, which has few predators, tolerates poor soil and grows on steep slopes unsuitable for other crops. Drug traffickers often supply farmers with "coca starter kits" that include seedlings as well as credit; many go door to door to buy farmers' coca leaves and paste. "Coca has been a salvation for peasants, because it was often the only way to make a living," says Patrice Vandenberghe, director of the U.N.'s Drug Control Program in Peru, where alternative development projects took root in the 1980s. "But if you give them schools for their kids, a health clinic and a livable wage, they are happy to escape this vicious circle." In fact, says Hernando de Soto, a former drug policy adviser to the Peruvian government, many farmers don't like working with menacing drug traffickers and hiding from the police. Coca farmers "know that they are in trouble," De Soto says. "They know that the more coca they grow, the more the (drug traffickers) will be coming around, and these are not the types of guys you want your daughter to marry." When Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori took office a decade ago, he at first resisted U.S. pressure to eradicate coca fields, because he feared it would turn farmers against his government and provide new allies for Shining Path, a terrorist group that was heavily involved in the drug trade. Instead, Fujimori asked for millions of dollars in economic aid to help coca farmers switch to food crops. The policy became known as "the Fujimori doctrine." "What we did, right from the beginning, was to tell the farmers that the government is on your side," De Soto says. "If you make farmers feel like they are citizens and that there is a peaceful way out, that stops the drug traffickers and the terrorists from coming in and making unholy alliances." The Peruvian military, in turn, made huge advances against Shining Path and began to pacify the countryside. Following a campaign to shoot down drug-laden aircraft bound for Colombia, prices for coca leaf tumbled. That made farmers more willing to try new crops. Today, as Luis Albitres, a Peruvian technician for an Arkansas-based aid organization, bounces along a dirt road in his four-wheel-drive Jeep, he no longer worries about guerrilla roadblocks. On both sides of the road, bananas, palm hearts, cacao and yucca grow where coca plants once flourished. Peru's coca crop has fallen by 66 percent over the past five years. Albitres' employer, Winrock International, has a contract with the U.S. government's Agency for International Development, or USAID, to manage alternative development programs in Peru. Winrock is constantly on the lookout for crops that can compete with coca. The organization has introduced organic coffees that garner high international prices as well as a new strain of disease-resistant banana that produces three times the yield of more common varieties. "Maybe we won't get rich, but at least we're confident that we can make a living," says Jorge Mendoza, a one-time coca farmer who works on a Winrock-managed banana plantation. A USAID official in the Peruvian capital of Lima says the idea is to win over farmers by setting a good example. "You have an impact when you create a model, when one farmer sees another farmer earning more for his products," the official says. So far, however, the impact of alternative development has been limited in Colombia. Last month, for example, police spray planes fumigated 25,000 acres of coca plantations in Norte de Santander state. Yet just a dribble of government aid was made available for crop substitution. PLANTE, the Colombian government's alternative development agency, helped establish the dairy plant in Cartagena del Chaira and has funded dozens of other projects. But budget shortfalls and misguided initiatives have hurt the agency's efforts. A few years ago, for example, PLANTE persuaded dozens of coca farmers in southern Putumayo state to switch to palm hearts for export to Europe. But it took so long for PLANTE and international agencies to build a canning plant for the palm hearts that many farmers returned to coca. No matter what farmers grow, the economic advantages of coca are difficult to match. According to a study by the Rand Corp., a public policy research center in Santa Monica, Calif., drug traffickers can easily increase the price they pay for coca in order to win back farmers who have switched to food crops. That's because traffickers pay just pennies for the coca leaf used in a gram of cocaine, which retails for about $150. According to a recent report by the U.S. Embassy in Lima, many farmers in Peru are now returning to coca, because prices for the plant are creeping back up. To roll back coca production permanently, South American governments will have to make a stronger, long-term commitment to poor farmers, says Ricardo Vargas of Andean Action, a private organization that researches drug issues in South America. Currently, USAID, the United Nations and other foreign donors underwrite most alternative development projects. What's more, Vargas points out, efforts to provide farmers with price supports, low-cost loans and other assistance run against the free-market doctrines that the region's governments have adopted. "We are talking about subsidizing these projects for five years or more," Vargas says. "And that is the question: Are governments willing to maintain a fictitious economy?" ~~~~~ Links to the other artices in "The Drug Quagmire" series: Colombia's War On Drugs Getting Hotter http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n992/a05.html Escobar's Drug Cartel Put Colombian Cocaine On Map http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n992/a06.html Mules Ferry Drugs Across Borders In Game Of Chance http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n993/a01.html US Aid Package For Colombia http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n992/a01.html Colombia Rolling In Cocaine Crop http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n996/a10.html Despite Risks, US-Backed Crop-Dusters On A Mission http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n996/a09.html Drug War Options http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1004/a03.html - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake