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