This farmer wanted to quit the cocaine industry - he couldn't
When Perea stopped growing coca - the raw material used to make cocaine - he vowed never to plant it again. He uprooted the green bushes on his small farm in a remote corner of the province of Meta in Colombia, reachable only by river, and replaced them with legal crops like cassava and plantain. Perea was one of thousands who joined a government-run crop substitution programme aimed at helping farmers abandon coca. But much of the promised assistance never arrived, and a lack of roads and recurring floods made it difficult to sell his produce. "It's a tragedy," says Perea. "But when you have children and no work, what choice do you have? If no help ever arrives, you go back to growing it." The coca leaf is an ancestral crop traditionally used by indigenous communities in teas and medicines. But today most of it is processed into cocaine. An estimated 70% of the global supply of the illegal drug comes from Colombia. "Coca has some major advantages over other crops," says Lucas Marín Llanes, a Colombian researcher who focuses on the coca economy and substitution strategies. "Harvests are quick - farmers can get three or four a year - it's easier to transport, and farmers know what price they'll get." Research Marín has worked on shows coca cultivation can also boost local economies, increasing municipal GDP by as much as 10% in some areas between 2014 and 2019. Substitution programmes were designed to help Colombian coca farmers move away from the crop and build legal livelihoods. Yet today the planting of coca is at record levels at more than 250,000 hectares - and many Colombians in substitution programmes say they have been let down. Elena Hernández moved to the coca-growing region of Guaviare during the boom of the 1990s, lured by better pay. "There was more money back then - you could see it everywhere," she says. "I managed to save and buy a small house."