Comments on State Department Numbers on Coca Cultivation in Colombia, Anna Cederstav, EarthJustice and the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense, February 27, 2003

Comments on State Department Numbers on Coca Cultivation in Colombia, Anna Cederstav, EarthJustice and the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense, February 27, 2003
Re: Comments on State Department Numbers on Coca Cultivation in Colombia

From: Anna Cederstav, Ph.D. Earthjustice and AIDA (www.earthjustice.org and www.aida2.org )

Date: February 27, 2003

The State Department numbers released today show a 15% decrease in Colombian coca crops (from 170,000 to 144,000 hectares) in the year 2002. However, in that same year, the US and Colombian governments sprayed 123,000 hectares, or 72% of the coca fields. Thus, comparing the hectares sprayed (123,000) to the hectares of "reduced" production (25,000), we find that the spraying is actually only 20% effective.

This poor performance is unlikely the result of ineffectiveness of the herbicide considering that Roundup is a potent herbicide that kills almost all plants it contacts, and it is being used at extremely high concentrations. Rather, 80% of the coca fields sprayed are being either a) replanted or b) "salvaged" by workers entering the fields immediately after spraying to wash the herbicide off the leaves. Both of these scenarios raise significant human health and environmental concerns. It is likely that the poor record of the spraying is due to a combination of the two scenarios:

1) If the plants are being salvaged by workers entering the fields and picking or cleaning the pesticide-contaminated leaves, there are serious human health concerns because of the high pesticide concentrations used. Unprotected workers should not be in direct contact with the plants immediately after spraying. But since the plants are surviving, Colombian farmers might have manually cleaned or picked pesticide-contaminated leaves off of plants in 100,000 hectares of fields. Imagine what that means in numbers of farmers (and most likely their wives and children) being exposed to the Roundup immediately post-spraying.

2) If the crops are being replanted, the question is whether they are replanted in the fields that were destroyed, or whether the farmers are migrating to new areas and clearing forest in hopes of avoiding the eradication forces. In the worst case scenario, this would mean that the coca fields that existed at the time of the study (144,000 hectares) included the 47,000 hectares that were not sprayed last year (28% of total coca crops) and up to 100,000 hectares of newly planted fields. The State Department has cited the adverse impact of coca cultivation in terms of pesticide use by the growers and deforestation. It's hardly acceptable if the US spraying program is causing an additional 100,000 hectares per year to be converted to coca plantations.

Thus, the fumigation program could be destroying more than 120,000 hectares of land (from the spraying) and another 100,000 hectares (from relocated coca plantations) ANNUALLY, in one of the world's most biodiverse regions. And for what? Has the supply of cocaine in the US market diminished? Is there reduced drug use in America? If anything, these are the factors that should be determining whether or not the US anti-drug efforts are "paying off."

The State Department press release attempts to demonstrate success by noting that "there are preliminary indications that cocaine purity fell in the US in conjunction with effective eradication efforts." However, a different State Department communication (http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/ongoing/cokepurity.html) shows that there are a number of potential reasons for a decrease in purity, and notes that most buyers probably don't notice the difference in quality, while others might increase quantities consumed to offset the decrease in purity. The State Department also states that "Some farmers are abandoning coca cultivation in major coca growing areas." This is an unclear statement. Does it mean that farmers are completely abandoning coca growing, or that they are simply leaving the major coca growing areas in Colombia for other regions of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, or Bolivia where there is lesser risk of fields being sprayed? If producers are simply relocating, the fumigation program won't lead to crop reduction until we have chased them throughout the Andean region and destroyed all viable coca farm land. Clearly, this is not an acceptable strategy.