PERU TRIES `TRAFFICKING' IN LEGAL CROPS

AGUAYTIA, Peru -- Standing knee-high in a field of young green palm plants,
Dionisio Flores Ortiz recalls how not long ago he and the farmers with plots
around his would have been up to their waists in coca -- the raw material
for cocaine.

``Now we're going to be trafficking something else,'' he says, as he pulls
on a palm that will be harvested for hearts of palm. ``The farmers here just
want to support their families and get a little ahead. As long as there's a
market for these new products, this change can be permanent.''

46lores -- and several hundred other campesinos with land on the outskirts
of this former stronghold of coca production in the Peruvian jungle -- are
part of a ``change'' with potential for strong repercussions in
narcotics-consuming countries like the United States.

Once (along with neighboring Bolivia) the world's premier producer of coca,
Peru over the past four years has cut production by 66 percent, according to
the U.S. State Department. Over the same period Bolivia's coca acreage has
tumbled by more than half.

Today, Colombian President Andres Pastrana is lobbying legislators in
Washington for a $1.6 billion aid package aimed at stifling his country's
coca industry -- the fastest-growing in the Andes region.

Just how this has been accomplished -- and how permanent it is -- remains
open to debate. Proponents of alternative development say a combination of
stiff drug interdiction, illicit crop eradication and markets for new crops
can wean farmers from growing coca.

Critics insist the reduction to date has simply been market-driven -- a
combination of lower demand in the United States and rising production costs
in traditional growing areas.

And the big question mark for both sides is Colombia. Land dedicated to coca
production there skyrocketed nearly 150 percent in the four years ending in
1999. That jump limited the overall drop in Andean coca acreage to 15
percent.

Colombia's huge coca plantations and a hot guerrilla war make for new
challenges that coca's slayers in Peru and Bolivia don't face.

U.S. and Peruvian officials insist illegal coca cultivation can be wiped out
of Peru and the Andes in this decade. The key, they say, is the interdiction
and alternative-development combination. Interdiction must eliminate
farmers' attraction to growing coca. A program of substitute crops and
marketing know-how is needed to give farmers a stable income alternative.

``We've seen that this can work, but only if you have `carrot and stick'
applied in a careful combination,'' says Curtis Kamman, U.S. ambassador in
Colombia, formerly ambassador to Bolivia. ``What you need is law enforcement
convincing the campesinos that they risk their crops being eradicated, or
risk being put in jail. But they will continue growing it if they don't have
an alternative that provides a fairly assured income.''

But people like Hugo Cabiesas, a narcotics-cultivation expert in Lima, say
the ``substantial decline in coca acreage'' has been only a temporary shift
in supply and demand.

Interdiction did break up the air-bridge traffickers used to ferry Peruvian
coca to Colombia for processing into cocaine, says Cabiesas, while higher
production costs on Peru's small plots also tarnished Peruvian coca's shine.
Those factors drove the price of Peruvian coca (and thus production) down.

In Aguaytia, the fall in coca prices has opened a window of opportunity for
alternative development. In addition to Flores' hearts of palm, farmers are
developing a banana and plantain cooperative with their own label, and
planting pineapples.

But others say the sacrifice and patience asked of campesinos is taking a
toll. ``While we're getting production up and our markets established, we
don't have money to pay our workers,'' says Edgar Merino Alado, president of
the Aguaytia area El Dorado plantain and banana cooperative. ``Between that
and the price of coca leaf going back up, some people are opting to go back
to the mountains to harvest the coca fields the army missed.''