Coca crop down in Colombia, up nearby

Colombia’s coca crop shrank by nearly 20% last year while cultivation rose for a third straight year in Peru and Bolivia, the world’s two other coca-producing nations, the United Nations said Friday.

The U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime said the 18% reduction in Colombia, the world’s top cocaine producer, from 2007 was owed in part to record manual eradication of 371 square miles of the bush, the leaves of which are used to produce cocaine.

Traffickers tend to migrate to countries where there is less police pressure and eradication, the U.N. agency representative for Colombia, Aldo Lale-Demoz, told reporters.

“There’s a shift from Colombia toward Peru and Bolivia,” he said, calling Peru more worrisome because of “the penetration of international cartels, above all Mexicans.”

In its annual survey of the cocaine trade in the region, the U.N. agency said coca cultivation in Colombia dropped to the lowest acreage since 2004, while Bolivia’s increased by 6% and Peru’s by 4.5%.

Crop eradication was down by more than 10% in both Bolivia and Peru. The United States complains that Bolivia, which expelled U.S. drug agents last year, is no longer a serious partner in combating drugs.

Cocaine production in Colombia, a major recipient of U.S. anti-drug aid, was down an estimated 28% last year.