cannabisnews.com: Coca Invades Colombia's Coffee Fields 





Coca Invades Colombia's Coffee Fields 
Posted by FoM on October 29, 2001 at 21:14:42 PT
By  Scott Wilson, Washington Post Foreign Service
Source: Washington Post 
Coffee shrubs the color of army fatigues cover the hills above this village, which is set in a deep valley cut by the River Samana. But near the peaks, the bright green stripes of another crop can be seen between the coffee, spelling trouble for Colombia's most renowned industry and the United States' drug war.No one here will claim the brilliant fields of coca, the key ingredient in cocaine. But farmers acknowledge that some among them have yanked up coffee plants in the past year and replaced them with crops that have a more profitable and reliable, if illegal, market. 
Along mountain roads, pickup trucks with beds filled with coca seedlings now pass buses stuffed with burlap sacks of coffee."Coffee has been fundamental to our economy," said a storeowner in this village of 1,000, about 90 miles northwest of the capital, Bogota. "We all rely on it. But right now a coffee farmer can't even pay for the basics. Coca is new to us here, so we don't know what it will bring. So far it has been only a grain of salt for our economy."What is squeezing the coffee farmers are the caprices of economic globalization. Years of good growing weather worldwide and a rising number of countries planting the beans have increased supplies and sent world prices tumbling. As income flowing back to villages like this falls, farmers find themselves pushed away from Colombia's most renowned crop toward its most notorious.The coffee crisis, as it is called here, has helped create a countrywide recession. Unemployment is near 20 percent, and higher in the countryside where war and scant public resources make poverty nearly inescapable. That, in turn, has given the country's various armed groups -- Marxist rebels on one side, a counter-guerrilla paramilitary force on the other -- a larger pool of idle young men and women from which to fill their ranks. Recruiting has never been easier.It is all bad news for the United States' $1.3 billion contribution to the anti-drug program known as Plan Colombia.Part of that mostly military package pays coca farmers to uproot their crops in favor of legal ones, an "alternative development" strategy unfolding slowly far to the south where drug crops are most bountiful. But here in rugged southeastern Antioquia and across its river border in Caldas province, the switch is working in reverse.It would be a reach to say that Juan Valdez, the iconic Colombian coffee farmer of television advertising, has turned to drugs. Although hard numbers are impossible to come by, evidence and informed estimates suggest that only about 1,000 of the country's 560,000 coffee farms have scrapped coffee plants in favor of coca or opium poppies. But just about all coffee farmers wonder how they are going to survive at the current prices.Archangel Cifuentes, picking beans in the town of Chinchina one recent morning, said his weekly salary had fallen from $50 to half that within a year. "Even with a good crop, the prices are so low we make nothing," he said, his hands darting from the bright red beans to the yellow bucket around his waist. "You Americans have to drink a lot more."The switch is occurring mostly on the remote edges of the country's coffee heartland, where there is little state presence. Most of those who have changed over maintain tiny illegal plots alongside larger coffee fields in hopes that prices will rise again.But international counter-narcotics officials here warn that things are likely to get worse. Klaus Nyholm, head of the U.N. Drug Control program in Colombia, said opium poppies are appearing on what was once traditional coffee land in the mountains of southwestern Tolima and southern Huila provinces.In the old days, Nyholm said, "Colombian hearts would beat faster at the sight of a coffee bush. Now we are going to have to start looking at alternatives within the coffee zone itself. But people are going to have to accept that legal alternatives to coffee may never yield as much money as coca, although they will not have the violence that goes with the drug trade. There is no magic solution."Coffee beans arrived here with proselytizing Jesuit priests almost three centuries ago. Like oil in the Middle East, coffee was the fuel for much of Colombia's economic and political development.Roads and railroads were built to move coffee from the cool slopes of Antioquia and its southern neighbors to the Pacific coast, where ports were built to ship it out. Coffee proceeds financed the development of such other exports as bananas, cotton and sugar, not to mention rural schools and health clinics. Colombia's coffee belt became one of the richest and most stable regions of the country.Production was dominated by small farms, in contrast to other Latin American and Caribbean countries where large plantations controlled the growing of such commodities as sugar and pineapples. Today, 96 percent of the country's coffee farmers tend plots smaller than seven acres. These farmers were the model for Juan Valdez.The broad participation in the nation's chief industry helped foster democratic participation in politics, as well. It was the driving force behind Colombia's decentralized system of government, one that was once widely admired but recently has shown weakness in dealing with a civil conflict that thrives on proceeds from drug crops.The bonanza years of the 1960s and 1970s, when shrewdly marketed Colombian coffee traded on commodities markets near $3 a pound, have ended in a supply glut. Colombian coffee now sells for about 62 cents a pound on the New York commodities exchange, generating just 10 percent of the country's legal export income. It once accounted for more than half.A big reason for the glut is Vietnam. With the soil and altitude in which coffee shrubs thrive, it was a major exporter before the Vietnam War and reentered the world market in about 1980. Today, it is exporting more coffee than Colombia, and though its beans are generally of a lower quality than Colombia's, they are helping drag down prices. A pound of Vietnamese coffee sells for about 16 cents."Vietnam is dumping," said Jorge Cardenas, head of the National Federation of Colombian Coffee Growers, using a term that meansselling on world markets at prices that are illegally low under trade law. He said Colombia's labor regulations make it impossible to produce coffee for less than 50 cents a pound. "We cannot compete," he said.To export Colombian coffee, a farmer or company must receive federation approval. Only 30 companies have that stamp, and together they control 70 percent of all coffee exports. The remaining 30 percent is controlled by the federation, which keeps a portion of its revenues for social development and has channeled about $1 billion over the past decadeinto building schools, clinics and roads in coffee-growing regions.Cardenas said the rules ensure that Colombian coffee sells for more than other types overseas, even during a crisis, but that allowing any farmer to sell abroad would "confuse the markets and lessen quality."Maria Teresa Londono, who owns a small factory that husks and sorts coffee beans in Chinchina, blames the federation for the current crisis. "They are killing us with paperwork," said Londono, whose father was the first coffee buyer in Chinchina. "If the rules are not changed to allow us to sell directly to the buyer, I don't know what is going to happen to this industry."The federation and international development groups are trying to encourage Colombian farmers to go "up market" and grow gourmet beans that will fetch higher prices. But here on the distant margins of coffee country, many farmers are simply getting out of the business.Moving northeast from Manizales, the capital of Caldas province and one of the world's most fertile coffee regions, abandoned coffee farms abound. Pasture covers hillsides that for decades had been coffee land, and prime coffee farms are rented out for parties and weekend getaways to help the owners make ends meet.Rural banks, long the chief source of loans in farming areas, have stopped lending to an industry in which it costs $15 to produce a 27.5-pound bag of coffee that sells abroad for $12.The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's main rebel group, controls much of this region, although farmers say the guerrillas are not profiting from the new crops as they do in other areas. But local officials fear that the social unrest that has traditionally accompanied falling standards of living will sharply increase in the months ahead, fueling guerrilla recruitment in the region.In the town of Pensilvania, in eastern Caldas, Mayor Jose Oscar Gonzales said coffee has been uprooted in favor of coca in the nearby towns of El Verdal, Playa Rica, Pueblo Nuevo and La Ceba. In all, he said, about 440 acres of coca have replaced coffee. The plots are tiny -- 1,000 to 2,000 plants each, enough to cover only a fraction of an acre.But Gonzales predicted that the 100 or so farmers who have made the change to coca, which can be harvested three times a year to coffee's one, are just the vanguard. "This isn't pressure from the guerrillas," he said. "This is poverty. Look, coca brings in 10 times the amount as coffee right now. This is the heart of the crisis."Note: Falling Prices Push Farmers to Plant Illegal Crops, Threatening U.S. Drug War. Source: Washington Post (DC) Author: Scott Wilson, Washington Post Foreign ServicePublished: Tuesday, October 30, 2001; Page A17 Copyright: 2001 The Washington Post Company Contact: letters washpost.com Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ Related Articles & Web Site:Colombia Drug War Newshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/colombia.htmU.S. Sees Broader Role in Colombia http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11203.shtmlDrug-War Plan To Aid Colombia Raises Questions http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11194.shtmlSenate Passes $15.6B Foreign Aid Billhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11174.shtml
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Comment #16 posted by lookinside on October 30, 2001 at 18:37:15 PT:
"I can only think...
... that Mother Nature is not going to put up with this."well said, ff...time to read some more about malthus' studies...
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Comment #15 posted by freedom fighter on October 30, 2001 at 16:21:07 PT
coca shrubs
are native to South America.. Andes range is 4 thousand miles and history show that the use of coca leaves dating back before Inca empire. 10-15 millions lived in northern-central area of Andes range during the Inca Empire. In other word, in any present/past country there that use intensive terracing of mountain slopes and irrigation probably grew coca. http://www.ddg.com/LIS/aurelia/andhis.htmMan, I remembered old days where I was able to get cocaine from Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela and Colombia.Anyhow, what is so remarkable about the Inca Empire, despite their use of coca leaves is that, this civilization, which developed urban centers, a road network, and a well organized and efficient administration, achieved remarkable skills in metal refining and metal working, architecture, weaving, pottery, and other arts were even able to do this.http://www.peakware.com/encyclopedia/ranges/andes.htm
http://www.ddg.com/LIS/aurelia/andhis.htmI just have a feeling that coca shrubs were all over the places down there, otherwise, it would have disappeared long time ago. Just like the cannabis...The Spanish Conquest brought destruction to Inca Empire. The Spanish tried to stop the use of coca leaves and they were not even sucessful with that.One wonder if human beings would learn anything from history and not repeat the same mistake over again. Maybe it is in Human nature to think they can control human beings but only to cause chaos and destruction of Mother Nature.I can only think that Mother Nature is not going to put up with this.Sigh!ff
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Comment #14 posted by sudaca on October 30, 2001 at 15:00:32 PT
coca tree
Is correctly identified as Peruvian/Bolivian in origin. The Altilplano (high and flat) is the original habitat of the Coca plant. Colombia became a growing paradise after US led intervention in Peru (still recovering from Montesinos/Fujimori/DEA) and Bolivia (biggest DEA playground in South America, so not recovering at all) made it a better deal to farm and process Coca in Colombia. So, you could say, that Colombian agriculture is shaped by US drug appetite.
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Comment #13 posted by lookinside on October 30, 2001 at 12:35:04 PT:
psychoactive substances...some questions...
how long have nepalese been making hash?how long have (east) indians been smoking cannabis?how long have native americans been chewing peyote and smoking tobacco?when did chewing coca leaves become popular in the andes?alexander the great was medicated with an espresso like brew in his final days...when was coffee discovered, and where?who decided drinking tea was a good thing and where?where is the cocao tree native to?is the opium poppy native to the indian subcontinent?do the indigenous peoples in amazonia really lick toads?when and where did man start making beer and wine?why, after the first time somebody tried these things, DID THEY DO IT AGAIN?who died and made the government in WARshington GOD???
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Comment #12 posted by bruce42 on October 30, 2001 at 11:22:49 PT
thanks lookinside
I'll see what I can do about getting my hands on some Papau beans. You learn something new every day. I just wanted to toss out some info. It seems coffee is going to be in the news now that the drug war is threatened by it, and it always helps to have facts on hand.I'm in the same boat you are when it comes to coca. Does anyone here have better information? As much as coca is demonized in the media it would be interesting to read more specifics about the plant. It seems to have that same evil weed rap as MJ and hemp.It's frustrating how the "goodness" and "badness" of a plant is arbitrarily determined by the DEA. To read their propoganda, you'd think MJ and coca were invented by terrorists for the express purpose of undermining American society.
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Comment #11 posted by lookinside on October 30, 2001 at 11:03:30 PT:
what little...
i've read indicates that the coca shrub is native to peru...and the leaves have been chewed by native peoples for millenia...
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Comment #10 posted by lookinside on October 30, 2001 at 10:57:17 PT:
bruce42...
i like coffee, ALOT...a few years ago i was involved in a venture to import coffee from the western pacific...my choice of partners was poor...it didn't cost me much and i ended up with about 100 pounds of the finest coffee on the planet...i drank it all...something i discovered during this period...i have a lousy palate...i can't tell the difference between robusta blends and high quality arabica coffees assuming they are roasted similarly...really fine coffee beans should NEVER be dark roasted...why destroy the flavor you paid $20 a pound for?...i prefer what's called the "american roast"...open a can of folger's to see the color i mean...all the major brands of coffee(hills bros., folger's, yuban, etc.) are blends of robusta(good price, high caffeine content) and arabica(strong pleasant flavors)beans...robustas have little flavor of their own...robustas are grown in lowlands, like brazil's amazon basin...they have a high caffeine content...this is thought to be defense mechanism against insects...arabicas are acclimated to higher altitudes(3-7 thousand feet)...they are naturally lower in caffeine and less hardy at lower altitudes...if you have a discerning palate, try the coffees grown in papua new guinea...better price and better quality than the famous jamaican and hawaiian coffees...(this opinion garnered from true gourmets i met during the coffee debacle...)
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Comment #9 posted by bruce42 on October 30, 2001 at 10:46:31 PT
The war
on drugs in Columbia doesn't acheive the supposed goal of stopping supply. What it DOES so is destroy people and the environment. Dr. Z is right. The farmers are protecting their only remaining cash crop with a coffee shield.I wonder how long it will be before crop dusters are hosing down colombian coffee fields with Round-up. In a way I hope it does happen. Then our corporate media might catch on and expose this oil-soaked Plan Colombia fiasco. The only reason this article is in the post is the coffee angle."It is all bad news for the United States' $1.3 billion contribution to the anti-drug program known as Plan Colombia...."As if we're supposed to feel sorry for the drug warriors who fly around spraying down rainforests and villages with toxic chemicals. This is important. Note that farmers are to blame and they plant coca cause the market is bad. Like that is suddenly new. Colombian farmers have been poor for a long time. They've planted coca for a long time. Only recently has the DEA started a huge chemical based eradication program. Granted, spraying and burning have been going on for a long time, but the Plan Colombia scale is truly monstrous. Yet it goes on. Why? Cause we're "saving the children" What a load! So colombian children don't count I guess. Imagine that. Coffee trees getting more coverage than dying children.Stupid media.
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Comment #8 posted by kaptinemo on October 30, 2001 at 10:22:22 PT:
Don't sweat it Bruce
I've received an education, anyways; not being a coffee drinker, I knew little about it.But, yes, it is about job security. Anti job security.When I was In the Army, there was still a lot of talk about why some people went in and stayed, and some didn't. The main line of reasoning was that some of us just couldn't 'cut it' on the Outside. And it had nothing to do with experience, and everything to do with mindset.Think about it: what kind of mindset is attracted to police work? Don't get me wrong; I'm sure there are lots of cops who, when freed of the influence of this insane DrugWar, would make first rate guardians. Some already are. But as has been noted so many times, with regards to cannabis and especially the Compassionate Use Clubs, they are actively engaged in something basically immoral, i.e. taking life-sustaining medicine from those in desperate need...under color of law.The local German police, under color of law, aided the Gestapo and the SS in rounding up their Jewish neighbors. And faced condemnation by the victors of the conflict as accessories to murder. Is what these DEA raiders doing to the Compassion Clubs any different? I submit not.I also submit that these people, so long as it is not made 'expensive' for them (either politically...or otherwise) will continue their predations. Because that is what they are: predators. Human predators; just read Richard Miller's book Drug Warriors and their Prey and you'll receive unalloyed confirmation of this. They really like getting decked out in their little black jumpsuits (with tape over their badges for anonymity), their black balaclavas, their armor, and their Fritz helmets and wave their MP5s around oh-so-dauntingly. But put them one on one with an average pissed off GI and all that bravado would vanish like an icicle in a blowtorch; it's one thing to threaten harmless, unarmed cannabis using patients, and quite another face someone equally well armed, and blood in his eye.On second thought, perhaps I should rephrase things; they are not true predators. More like carrion eaters.Like vultures.
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Comment #7 posted by Sudaca on October 30, 2001 at 09:59:43 PT
what
neither cofee nor coca ar native plants to Colombia. What's news here? only that the war on drugs still doesn't do anything; and that colombia exports two of the drugs; and the illegal one is a better deal."Look, coca brings in 10 times the amount as coffee right now. This is the heart of the crisis."
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Comment #6 posted by bruce42 on October 30, 2001 at 09:13:21 PT
ooops
I think I said Coffea Robusta. That should have been Coffea Canephora a.k.a. Robusta coffee. I think I need more coffee ;-)
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Comment #5 posted by bruce42 on October 30, 2001 at 09:09:46 PT
out of work
That is the problem isn't it? The antis just don't have a way out if, wait, scratch that, WHEN the Drug war goes under. I think we brought up this topic in a far earlier news article, but it seems appropriate again. Perhaps if we take the current prison funding for a year and use it to pay off all of these "wonks" we can pry their butts out of the seats of power. I think we all remember that cute video clip with the friendly police man yanking up some weed. Something about job security.Back to coffee. Yes. Coffee is non native to Columbia, but it does have several good qualities before we knock it too hard. A) It is a great oxygen producer. A hectare of coffee trees produces half the oxygen that a hectare of rainforest does. This doesn't soud so hot at first, but consider that that hectare of coffee has many times less biomass than the rainforest. B) Coffee is a tree. The plants live a long time. They have good root structures. Thus soil is conserved. C) Coffee doesn't require a whole lot of fertilizer or pesticide. Compared to grain crops or cotton, coffee is pretty thrifty.Now the article mentions competition from Vietnam. Unfortuneately they really gloss over some important detailsand jumble it under a general label of "globalization." Truth is, coffee was a global market long before some dork coined the term. The problem is that Vietnam grows Coffea Robusta, a hardier plant that producers far inferior beans than Coffea Arabica, the type of coffee grown in Colombia. The robusta beans are pretty crappy and are usually slated for the instant coffee market. Americans do consume plenty of coffee, but they really aren't coffee connoisseurs. In fact, most American coffee producers roast beans very dark to mask poor bean quality. So, we have coffee companies looking for profit, Americans who don't know the difference between a coffe bean and a cat turd, and a number of Southeast Asian countries looking to flood the market with cheap robusta beans. Why do you think they have those Colombian coffee bean ads? It really IS better coffee.For more info on coffee check out:http://www.coffeeresearch.orgA very thorough site. I reccomend the politics, market, and coffe overview sections. 
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Comment #4 posted by kaptinemo on October 30, 2001 at 05:37:21 PT:
What's invading where?
Coffee is not indigenous to Colombia...coca is.Again and again and again...the same old refrain cannot be said often enough: CROP SUBSTITUTIONS DON'T WORK.But farmers acknowledge that some among them have yanked up coffee plants in the past year and replaced them with crops that have a more profitable and reliable, if illegal, market.and:Part of that mostly military package pays coca farmers to uproot their crops in favor of legal ones, an "alternative development" strategy unfolding slowly far to the south where drug crops are most bountiful. But here in rugged southeastern Antioquia and across its river border in Caldas province, the switch is working in reverse...In the old days, Nyholm said, "Colombian hearts would beat faster at the sight of a coffee bush. Now we are going to have to start looking at alternatives within the coffee zone itself. But people are going to have to accept that legal alternatives to coffee may never yield as much money as coca, although they will not have the violence that goes with the drug trade. There is no magic solution."Ah, but there is, Mr. Nyholm. There has always been one. Legalization, control and regulation. Rather neatly ends the entire black market, doesn't it? And put bureaucratic wonks like you out of a job. Wherein lies the rub; lots of otherwise unemployable people with no real vocational training in anything useful - and rotten interpersonal skills - would be let loose to swell the soon-to-be overburdened unemployment lines in presently prohib nations. Can't have that, now can we? You and all your anti brethren have a retirement plan to pay into...on the backs of those whom your efforts have destroyed...all 'for their own good', of course.This is what happens when you give government agencies any power; far too often that power cannot be revoked; it grows exponentially until it threatens the very institutions that it was purported to serve. This is a perfect example of this dynamic in operation...but the bureaucrats either can't see it - or won't.
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Comment #3 posted by JR Bob Dobbs on October 30, 2001 at 04:26:53 PT
Bad narc - no java!
  I love it. The Columbians know exactly the drug of choice of the warriors who claim to be fighting this war on some drugs - so they plant the one the warriors want to destroy, next to the ones the warriors are themselves addicted to. Genius.
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Comment #2 posted by dddd on October 30, 2001 at 01:34:38 PT
come to think of it
It seems to me that there have been much fewer coffee commercials on TV lately...I think Juan Valdez either got murdered,of he joined the FARC,,,,heck,,Mrs Olson probably switched to coke...ya sure...dddd
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Comment #1 posted by freedom fighter on October 30, 2001 at 00:29:48 PT
In WW2 back then
we had rationing rules...When the givement said one cup of coffee a day rule...Americans promptly fired half of the democrats from their seats..Talk about addiction! Sigh! I learned that today from a PBS news...ff
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