CAN CHOCOLATE HELP TO FIGHT WAR ON DRUGS?

Scientists are working in government labs and at sites deep in the Andean
jungle to develop a new weapon in the war on drugs: a superrobust
cocoa-bean tree.

They hope that a disease-resistant cocoa-bean tree will one day prove
superprofitable, making drug crops such as coca, the source of the raw
material used to make cocaine, less attractive for farmers to grow.

Nothing would please the U.S. chocolate industry more than a steady stream
of cocoa beans from strong trees. That is why the Chocolate Manufacturers
Association is partially funding the project, which is being run out of the
State Department. The Agriculture Department also is taking part,
contributing money and expertise in plant genetics and selective breeding.

Working in Miami, at the USDA's Subtropical Horticulture Research Station,
scientists are charged with creating the new and improved cacao tree (the
proper name of the plant that produces cocoa beans). Four USDA scientists
are studying the genes of various types of cacao trees, trying to figure
out which ones help make the tree less susceptible to disease. After they
identify these genes on the tree's genome, they will breed the trees and
grow them in plots in Miami. Only then can they be planted in test fields
in Costa Rica, Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador.

Ray Schnell, a geneticist heading up the project, says they expect to
deliver the fortified trees to cocoa-bean farmers by as soon as 2010. The
farmers would be able to graft the new trees onto the trunks of existing
trees to hasten growth, he says.

South America used to be a dominant supplier of cocoa beans. But starting
in the late 1980s, the continent's crop was eaten by tree-munching fungi
with common names such as "witches' broom" and "frosty pod." Brazil's cocoa
bean yields dropped 42% from 1991 to 2001, according to the United Nations.
Shrinking supplies prompted the U.S. chocolate industry to switch much of
its buying to sources in western Africa and Indonesia.

Now, the industry is welcoming the possibility of increased supplies of
South American beans. To create their particular chocolate flavors,
companies depend on steady supplies of many different types of beans, some
of which grow only in South America. "You can find good cocoa in all parts
of the world," says Bill Guyton, vice president for research at the
American Cocoa Research Institute, an arm of the chocolate manufacturers
group. But Latin America "is important because you have flavor beans you
don't get elsewhere."

Behind the supercocoa project are two troubling trends: Cocoa prices and
plantings of cacao trees are falling in South America, while prices of the
cocaine precursor, coca, and plantings of it are rising. Coca prices passed
the $1-a-pound mark in 2001, according to a 2002 United Nations report on
drugs. Meantime cocoa bean prices hit a low of about 40 cents a pound in
2000, according to the International Cocoa Organization, a United
Kingdom-based promotion and research group.

The discouraging economics have U.S. government officials worried that
farmers in countries such as Ecuador, which relies heavily on cocoa-bean
production, will turn to drug crops to survive. "There is a good chance of
spillage" of the drug trade into Ecuador from neighbors such as Colombia,
says Al Matano, deputy director of the State Department's Office of the
Americas Program. "We believe if you can [give] the farmer a crop that can
give them a better-than-sustainable living -- but without the criminal
element -- they would do it," he says.

Total funding for the tree-development program is starting out small --
only a few million dollars a year for two years. The goal is to leave
farmers with a crop they will stick with after U.S. aid money runs out.
Economic-development projects often face problems when an alternative crop
turns out to lack a strong market or doesn't grow well in the area. Crops
also can spoil or get damaged before reaching market because of bad roads.

Government officials hope a stronger cacao tree will offer a better
solution. They are counting on chocolate-loving Americans to provide a
dependable market for the beans. And they are confident the cacao tree,
indigenous to South America, will thrive there. Cocoa beans stay fresh
longer than fruits and vegetables, and so slow transportation doesn't
present a major concern.

But even if the tougher trees can be developed successfully in the lab,
farmers will have to find ways to survive during the several years it will
take the trees to grow on their farms. All the while, they may face the
wrath of local drug lords: Farmers are often threatened by drug traffickers
if they refuse to grow drug crops.

Chocolate-industry officials are keeping their distance from the
drug-interdiction aspects of the program. Mr. Guyton, of the chocolate
research group, says it is "too premature" to talk about possible safety
issues that may arise for chocolate-industry people in the region.

Adolfo Franco, assistant administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean
at the U.S. Agency for International Development, says it is a good idea to
fight the spread of coca farming by addressing the reasons it happens.
"It's when there is no security on the ground -- no sense of community ...
a lack of alternatives -- that people turn to this," he says. USAID, which
runs most of the government's foreign-aid projects, isn't involved in the
cocoa-tree effort but hopes to draw on what the scientists learn for other
projects.