New Solutions, Same Problems: The Colombian Coca Farmer’s Plight
By: Peter Veldkamp
In recent years, the opioid crisis in the U.S. has received the vast majority of public health attention; indeed, sixty-seven percent of drug-related deaths in 2018 involved an opioid.[1] However, another illicit drug that has taken the backseat to opioids and has seen a dramatic spike in usage: cocaine.[2] Part of the reason for this increase is attributable to fentanyl, a “highly potent synthetic opioid,” but a National Drug Assessment performed by the Drug Enforcement Agency in 2018 demonstrated that a rise in cocaine usage could also be linked to an increase in the drug’s availability.[3] At the source of this availability is Colombia – the top producer of the cocaine.[4]
For many farmers in Colombia, it makes more sense to grow coca – the main ingredient in cocaine – than it does some other legal commodity crop.[5] The economics surrounding the coca trade easily make it the most profitable crop to grow in Colombia.[6] In fact, a pound of coca paste can sell for more money than a ton of corn.[7] For farmers with families, coca production is not only profitable work but also steady work.[8] The production of the coca leaf is so engrained in Colombia’s history that many farmers are uncertain of what other legal crops would even grow in Colombia’s thin tropical soil. [9]
The profits received from producing coca in Colombia are not without their risks, however. The production of coca has been marred with demanding physical labor, violence from drug traffickers, arrest by Colombian government officials, loss of crop due to eradication, and death.[10] Crop eradication has been considered a key tool in this fight.[11] While effective against large fields of coca plants, aerial spraying often led to imprecise spraying that contaminated licit crops, limited future yields from sprayed fields, and caused citizens to express fear over perceived negative health effects from such spraying.[12] In addition to mass spraying, the Colombian government also utilizes manual eradication techniques such as burning and physical removal of plants.[13] These efforts are also only costly for the Colombian government.[14]
Likewise, eradication is also often paired with drug interdiction, which can lead to arrests of coca producers that were economically subscripted into coca production.[15] Interdiction has become a key part of Colombia’s counternarcotic strategy, but it has historically led to battles between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) – a band of Marxist rebels comprised of approximately 10,000 rural farmers who are opposed to wealth inequality and the effect of international players on policy. FARC has engaged in a plethora of violent attacks against any resource or individual perceived to be a “political or economic target.”[16] On a single day, twenty-six FARC guerillas were killed in an air attack.[17] Much of the grass-roots support garnered by FARC stemmed from the aerial fumigation of farmer’s pineapple, bean, and other licit crop fields.[18] As both sides recognized the violence being inflicted on Colombians, peace talks were ultimately successful.[19] In 2016, a formalized peace agreement was entered into by the Colombian government and FARC, requiring that FARC demilitarize and turn over weapons.[20]
Although Colombian coca producers no longer experience the same day to day violence from guerilla warfare that previously consumed their lives, economic relief measures provided by the government have failed to improve.[21] An initial program in which the Colombian government made cash payments to coca farmers in exchange for uprooting their coca fields ultimately failed.[22] At first, some farmers signed up for the program, but word quickly broke out that continuing to produce the coca was more profitable than the cash payments the government was making at that time.[23]
A more popular program known as the National Comprehensive Program for the Substitution of Illicit Crops had similar drawbacks.[24] Under this program, the government planned to eradicate 100,000 hectares of coca before the end of the year.[25] Half of these acres are to be voluntarily replaced with licit crops by farmers in exchange for $11,000 over the course of two years.[26] Notwithstanding this incentive and the initial popularity of the program, these efforts were undermined by criminal actors placing pressure on farmers from joining the crop substitution program.[27]
Not unlike FARC, these criminal actors used enticing economic offers or threats of violence to ensure coca producers maintained their coca fields.[28] Compared to easy cash-for-goods arrangement with drug traffickers, the government benefits themselves have to be obtained through a myriad of corruption and red tape.[29] Critics agree that even though Colombia has spent the most on crop substitution programs of any country in the world, most of the programs are “badly designed and underfunded.”[30] Even if transition to a commodity crop is successful, Colombia does not have a minimum guaranteed price for individual commodities, making family farms particularly exposed to fluctuating commodity markets.[31]The additional efforts an impoverished and uneducated coca farmer must go through in order to successfully transition from coca to corn is simply not feasible after accounting for these factors.[32]
For coca farmers in Colombia, the production of the coca plant is not only a way of life, but the only viable option. With pressure from criminal actors and repeatedly failed government programs, famers have no other reasonable option but to produce the profitable coca leaf that is well-suited for the Colombian climate. If a supply-side approach to combating the production of cocaine is to be successful, a new solution must be enacted that is free from the pitfalls that have plagued Colombia’s historic responses.
#Colombia #Coca #Farming #Veldkamp #International #Law #BlogPost
[1] U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Opioid Crisis Statistics (2020).
[2] Chloe Reichel, Cocaine Use is on the Rise: Research Highlights Troubling Trends, Journalist’s Resource (May 29, 2019), https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/public-health/cocaine-research-fentanyl-overdose/.
[3] Id.
[4] John Otis, Colombia is Growing Record Amounts of Coca, The Key Ingredient in Cocaine, NPR (October 22, 2018), https://www.npr.org/2018/10/22/658547337/colombia-is-growing-record-amounts-of-coca-the-key-ingredient-in-cocaine.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Id.
[8] Id.
[9] Id.
[10] June S. Beittel, Colombia’s Changing Approach to Drug Policy, Congressional Research Service, Nov. 2017, at 1, 3-5.
[11] Id. at 14.
[12] Id.
[13] Id. at 16.
[14] Id.
[15] Id.
[16] FARC, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. (2018).
[17] Id.
[18] Otis, supra note 4.
[19] FARC, supra note 15.
[20] Id.
[21] Otis, supra note 4.
[22] Id.
[23] Id.
[24] Claire Dennis, Colombia’s New Crop Substitution Plan Facing Old Obstacles: Report, Latin America Working Group.
[25] Id.
[26] Id.
[27] Id.
[28] Id.
[29] Otis, supra note 4.
[30] John Otis, Colombia Tries to Get Away From the Cocaine Biz. Hows’ That Going?, NPR (Nov. 24, 2018).
[31] Id.
[32] Id.