LURING COLOMBIAN FARMERS FROM COCA CASH CROP

SANTA ANA, Colombia - On a verdant farm carved from thick jungle, Leonardo
Arevalo raises 7,000 fish, a small herd of cattle and plenty of yucca and
corn. Yet, in eight years of farming in this corner of southern Colombia,
Mr. Arevalo says with a tired look, none of it has brought him much of a
living. Then there are the five isolated acres lying far off the main road,
where Mr. Arevalo raises the only cash crop to speak of in this region:
coca. Harvested every three months, the bright, green leaves are sold for
processing into coca paste, the gummy base for cocaine. Coca growing has not
made Mr. Arevalo rich, but the earnings have helped feed his family. By
early December, Mr. Arevalo and thousands of farmers on the rolling
hillsides near this tiny farming community will agree in writing to become
the first to take part in an ambitious government program that calls for
them voluntarily to replace coca plants with legal crops, or risk having
their farms destroyed.

The plan, supported with American funding, is a crucial component in the
government's $7.5 billion effort to eradicate coca in this prime coca region
and thereby weaken the rebels, who use coca profits to finance their
guerrilla war.

"During a long period of time, the strategy in this battle was based on the
idea of fumigation, and now what we want to do, from a strategic viewpoint,
is increase the importance of voluntary interdiction," said Gonzalo de
Francisco, President Andres Pastrana's special adviser on the Putumayo
Province, where the program is beginning. "What we're hoping for is that
they will work the land with other crops until they have no more room for
coca." Under the plan, eligible farmers - those with less than eight acres
of coca - would immediately replace their coca with corn, plantains or other
subsistence crops. Later they would cultivate hearts of palm, black pepper,
fish or medicinal plants for the export market.

The government, in return, is promising subsidies and technical help and
tens of millions of dollars to pave roads so farmers can take their crops to
market, and to build plants to process crops for sale worldwide. If
successful, the program would be repeated across Putumayo and beyond,
lessening dependence on the aerial spraying that will still be used to
destroy large coca fields.

Crop-substitution, however, faces an array of difficult challenges in this
Vermont-sized province, home, the government says, to about half the
nation's 255,000 acres of coca.

First, government officials do not know how the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia, the rebel group that has taken control of many roads in
Putumayo, will react. The rebels see the program as a strategy aimed at
defeating them.

Then there are the farmers' deep suspicions about the government. In
Putumayo, a poor and isolated province of farms and dusty towns carved out
of Amazonian jungle, farmers remember how a government agency in 1996
prodded them to give up coca for the spiny palm trees that produce heart of
palm. In Mr. Arevalo's case, he replaced his coca with 10,000 palm trees.
Today, the trees - palmitos, in Spanish - are fully grown. A swipe of a
machete reveals the soft, white insides, popular in salads at upmarket
American and European restaurants. So far, however, not one of Mr. Arevalo's
palmitos has made it to market because the processing factory the government
promised is only now on the verge of opening.

"They came and they brainwashed me," said Mr. Arevalo, 53. "I did so much
work on that field that in 14 months I was ready to harvest. Then, when we
had to cut the palmito, we had nowhere to sell."

Eduardo Gamarra, who has extensively studied alternative development
programs, said weaning farmers off coca with subsidies was nearly impossible
in regions like Putumayo that have poor soil and marketing structure. In
Chapare Province in Bolivia, where coca has nearly been wiped out, farmers
who were paid to switch to other crops often kept growing coca, Mr. Gamarra
said, and outsiders attracted by subsidies started arriving. Success only
came after Bolivian army troops forcefully destroyed the coca plants, he
said. "When you cost in all the money you're going to invest, this is not
the most rational market-driven mechanism," said Mr. Gamarra, director of
the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University
in Miami. Colombian and American officials acknowledge the obstacles, but
they already cite modest success in eradicating heroin poppies in Colombia
through alternative development. In the last year, a $15 million
American-backed program run by the United States Agency for International
Development has led to the voluntary eradication of 1,500 acres of poppies,
out of 20,000 acres nationwide.

George Wachtenheim, director of A.I.D. in Colombia, said the program could
work in Putumayo in large part because the farmers are being presented with
a stark choice: replace coca or pay the consequences. "The threat of forced
eradication has to be just as credible as the offer of assistance," said Mr.
Wachtenheim, who worked on similar projects in Peru and Bolivia. "We found
that one doesn't work without the other, neither the stick nor the carrot.
They really do need to go hand in hand, and that's the approach that the
Colombian government has crafted." Colombian officials also insisted that
while promises to farmers were not always honored in the past, Colombia now
has the money and the commitment to make alternative development work.
A.I.D. is pumping in $47 million. The Colombian government has budgeted
another $15 million for eradication, road improvements and social programs
in Putumayo. And more will be spent next year. "There are revenues for
this," said Eduardo Pizano, President Pastrana's chief of staff. "Before,
this was something that was improvised, and - depending on budgetary
availability - the programs existed or didn't exist. In this case, the money
is here."

Getting the message across to farmers, however, has not been easy. In the
small farming communities across the coca belt of southwest Putumayo, the
central government in Bogota has enlisted the help of Mayor Manuel Alzate of
Puerto Asis and other town officials who have long been staunchly opposed to
fumigation. On a recent three-day swing through rebel-controlled territory,
the mayor and his aides talked farmers into signing letters of intent,
meaning they are on board, at least in spirit, with the government's plan.
Standing on a stage outside a school in one community, La Carmelita, Mr.
Alzate told several hundred farmers that the government planned to honor its
pledge. He also warned that not complying could be disastrous. "They won't
just fumigate your coca, they will fumigate all your plants," the mayor said
as the audience, weathered men wearing machetes and straw hats, listened
intently. "They will fumigate your homes. Fumigate your chickens. Coca does
nothing but bring fumigation."

Many farmers later said they would not touch their coca until the government
paid them, a proposal the government rejects. Others said they would not
replace their coca until roads are paved and processing plants are built.
The farmers, and even local officials like Mr. Alzate, also want the
government to give them two years - not one - to destroy all the coca. "If I
pull out those plants, there goes all I have," explained Marcos Acosta, 48.
"We have all heard the promises. We have all heard that they would help -
and then nothing."

Yet the farmers were also clearly intrigued with the idea of somehow seeing
legal crops from Putumayo sold in American and European markets, as the
government has proposed. And they grudgingly acknowledged that they had few
other options.

"We will pull them out," said Jorge Garcia, who has seven acres of coca.
"But we need to see the government act in good faith. They haven't sent us
anything before, just soldiers. That's all we get."