Coca Crop Substitution Ufair to Farmers
Problems with the U.S.-sponsored coca crop substitution program in Colombia go way beyond those of an excessive and unresponsive bureaucracy (“Farmers Decry Effort to Halt Coca Planting,” Dec. 20). During an American Friends Service Committee fact-finding trip to the Colombia department of Putumayo in October, I spoke with peasants and peasant leaders who said they had received, under the program, decrepit, unproductive and diseased hens they believe were rejects from Colombia’s large, corporate poultry farms. Organizations in Colombia distribute seeds and animals that cannot withstand Putumayo’s soil or climate. They rake a healthy 30% off each peasant’s aid allocation.
The AFSC believes that the crop substitution program is a failure and a fraud. To subject the people of Colombia and Ecuador to the ravages of aerial fumigation when the only alternative is a program so fraught with problems is an outrage that will serve all parties poorly in the long run.
Lawrence Reichard
Coordinator, Rural Economic
Alternative Program
American Friends Service
Committee, Stockton
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