Pubdate: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 Source: Macon Telegraph (GA) Copyright: 2002 The Macon Telegraph Publishing Company Contact: http://www.macontelegraph.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/667 Author: Ronald Fraser Note: Ronald Fraser, Ph.D., writes on public policy issues for the DKT Liberty Project. U.S. FARM SUBSIDIES CAN END COLOMBIA'S DRUG WAR Since Colombia is the source of 90 percent of the cocaine used in the United States, Washington's drug war goal in that country is simple: stop coca cultivation on about 300,000 acres of farm land. The centerpiece of our current anti-drug program, Plan Colombia, however, is training and equipping two combat battalions to fight drug traffickers. What Colombia really needs is an American-style, subsidy-driven farm welfare program. Patrick J. Leahy, a member of the Senate committee that funds Plan Colombia, told the New York Times recently, "The results of Plan Colombia have been disappointing. After spending more than $1.5 billion, in many respects the situation is worse today than before the Plan Colombia began." Acres under coca cultivation in Colombia, for example, have almost tripled since 1995, and our puny $43 million effort to help individual farmers shift to alternative crops is foundering. Drug warriors in the Drug Enforcement Agency have long treated the production, processing and distribution of Colombian cocaine as a law enforcement problem. Again and again they have tried to solve this mis-defined problem with police and military tactics. Result - not so much as a dent in the flow of cocaine into the U.S. The Department of Agriculture, on the other hand, is the nation's crop control czar, with the motto: "Why use force when a few billion American greenbacks will do the job?" Once the secretary of agriculture rewrites Plan Colombia, excess coca production will be seen as a land use problem calling for financial incentives capable of pointing Colombian farmers in the right direction. The approach is time tested. What has the DOA done in the past to entice U.S. farmers to cut back on their production of corn or wheat? Did it spray the unwanted crops with poisons from the air? Did it set the unwanted crops on fire? Did it send in armed forces to destroy American corn storage and processing facilities? No sir. Crop-busters at DOA, in league with their allies in Congress, have been concocting financial incentives for many decades to lure Iowa and North Dakota farmers away from the unwanted crops. DOA knows the key is to find the magic subsidy threshold at which farmers become pawns to Washington check writers. Two-thirds of Colombia's coca acreage is operated as large plantations controlled by drug traffickers. One-third is divided among two and three acre plots operated by 37,000 small time farmers. Because farmers are now being offered government assistance equal to about 10 percent of the value of their coca crops, Plan Colombia is failing to gain their cooperation. DOA, on the other hand, would offer full subsidy packages to the 37,000 small coca operators. If an acre produces about $400 worth of coca per crop, and a farm raises four crops per year, the DOA would pay the average farmer on 2.7 acres $4,320 a year to idle his land, or at least not to grow coca. This is more than double the per-capita gross domestic product of Colombia, meaning these farmers can get rich - like American farmers - doing something we want them to do or, for that matter, for doing nothing at all. As for the 74,000 or so workers employed on the larger plantations, DOA could pay them too. Four or five thousand dollars a year is plenty to keep them out of the coca business. This all adds up to a total DOA drug war subsidy of about $480 million per year. If we assume a three-year effort would wean Colombian farmers from coca, the DOA coca war victory would cost about $1.5 billion, a sum surprisingly similar to the cost, to date, of the troubled Plan Colombia. The DOA approach amounts to common sense. Colombian coca is headed our way in the form of cocaine. We can either deal with it in Colombia, or deal with it here. America's domestic law enforcement, interdiction and international drug control budgets add up to about $12 billion a year - much of that money is now spent trying to interdict Colombian cocaine enroute to the U.S. If, however, the Colombian coca trade can be idled with $500 million a year in direct crop subsidies, we could cut our domestic and interdiction drug war costs by three or four times that amount. Of course, the Peruvian coca farmers might want in on the deal too - then there's Bolivia. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth