Cultivation of coca, the base ingredient for cocaine, is booming in Colombia. The government tries to slash production by employing hundreds of people and police officers to destroy crops, but armed gangs and drug traffickers oppose them. People have died in recent clashes over coca; others have been injured by landmines laid to scare people away from destroying coca plants. The minister of foreign affairs blamed coca growth on the scheming of drug-trafficking gangs and peasants planting more coca to take advantage of the new substitution initiatives under the peace accords. However, the government should be offering peasant farmers better incentives to grow alternative crops. After 200 years of reforms and many billions of pesos invested, the same inequality in agriculture persists. There is a lack of political will on the part of the state to make the peasant farmers’ economy viable. See
Colombia: conflict over coca crops
Written by David Fletcher 27 Oct 2017Additional Info
- Pray: for land equality in one of the most unequal countries in the world, for new laws to end the takeover of land in conflict-ridden areas by large landowners, and laws that give justice to the poor. (Psalm 9:16)
- More: www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/deadly-clashes-colombia-destroys-coca-crops-171025150023316.html
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