Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 27, 1990 TAG: 9005270323
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By SHIRLEY CHRISTIAN THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: ETERAMASAMA, BOLIVIA LENGTH: Long
A hundred pounds of coca today may bring only 15 to 20 bolivianos, the equivalent of $5 to $7, he said, "and for that I have to carry the bags of leaves up to the crossroads on my back, then pay for transport to market."
It is a familiar predicament for the small farmers who produce a third of the world's coca, a crop that once provided a secure cash flow, as much as $400 to $500 a hundred pounds.
Drug experts say the price drop, which has led farmers to plant other crops, is a result of the crackdown on major drug traffickers in Colombia and the relentless assaults on drug laboratories and wholesale buyers of coca paste here in Bolivia.
Those actions are believed to have interrupted processing activities and lowered demand for coca leaves.
Some of Bolivia's coca is turned into cocaine inside the country and more in Colombia, with virtually all of the marketing done by Colombian dealers.
"Since the price fell, there is almost nothing for the people here," Lazo said as he led the way through the insects and interminable tropical rain to his remaining patch of coca - about 2 1/2 acres, a third of what he had three years ago.
For lack of money, he said, he has stopped fertilizing and spraying it.
Lazo and other farmers here in the Chapare rain forest, Bolivia's main coca-growing region, have begun to substitute fruit and other crops.
They are doing it at such a quick pace the aid programs run by the Bolivian government, the United States, the United Nations and others are unable to keep up with the demand for seeds, plants and eradication payments.
A State Department official in La Paz said when the United States does its annual aerial survey of drug-producing countries this year, Bolivia will show its first ever decline in total coca acreage.
Drug experts attribute the race to other crops to the almost total collapse in the price of coca leaves in the last six months.
Although there are skeptics among them who say they believe the price drop is temporary or maintain the farmers are eradicating coca along the roads while going deeper into the jungle to start new seed beds, more of the experts say they believe that in just a few years, Bolivia's part in the cocaine business could be reduced to a minor role.
The State Department official called it a "dying industry" in Bolivia.
He and other experts said the sharp decline in coca production in Bolivia would not necessarily lower the total supply of cocaine because the Upper Huallaga Valley in Peru, the leading source of coca leaf, is capable of expanded production.
Drug experts in La Paz said the presence of the Shining Path guerrilla organization in Peru greatly inhibited raids and other interdiction activities against drug laboratories and traffickers there.
As a result, they said, the price of coca leaf in Peru has not collapsed as in Bolivia, and recent reports from Peru say farmers there are planting more acres in coca than ever before.
But officials say that in the Chapare, farmers have voluntarily dug up more than 8,000 acres of coca plants this year - more than was eliminated in all of 1989 and more than the government, in an agreement with the United States, promised to eradicate in all of this year.
The Chapare was estimated to have 100,000 acres of coca last year.
Some government officials say they fear the mass retreat from coca by Bolivian farmers will gather steam faster than economic development programs can find ways to replace the $500 million to $600 million coca is thought to represent in hard-currency income.
It is the lost income that worries Lazo and about 40,000 other farmers producing coca in the Chapare.
Despite the big money associated with cocaine, their place at the bottom of the ladder earned them an income only slightly above subsistence level.
But it was better than most Bolivians had.
Now, the coca farmers say they fear they and their families will have nothing to eat and and there will be nowhere to sell the other products agronomists and extension agents are persuading them to grow.
Jose Decker, who directs the substitution program from offices in Cochabamba, the departmental capital, said his biggest worry was finding markets for the products - citrus, pineapple, macadamia, ginger, pepper, exotic fruits and flowers, and more - that will be pouring out of the Chapare in the next few years.
"The problem is that private national firms in Bolivia have no experience in international marketing," he said. "Except concerning tin and coca, this country has never had an export mentality."
Joe Lopez, a New Mexico-born tropical agriculture specialist who serves as a consultant to the crop substitution program, is less worried.
He is convinced that as the crops come into production, the markets and processing plants will appear.
He said several foreign companies had expressed interest in buying from the Chapare.
by CNB