A 2001 article from the Washington Post Foreign Service: “farmers acknowledge that some among them have yanked up coffee plants in the past year and replaced them with crops that have a more profitable and reliable, if illegal, market. Along mountain roads, pickup trucks with beds filled with coca seedlings now pass buses stuffed with burlap sacks of coffee.”

A 2002 article from MSNBC: “More lucrative cannabis and opium poppy crops are increasingly replacing coffee, ratcheting up rural violence.” (via Two Heroes)

A Dec. 2004 ABC News article reports that “desperately poor coffee growers switch to growing heroin and cocaine to keep their families fed,” because despite the fact that these farmers may be growing high quality coffee, they’re not receiving high prices for them.

Rural farmers make pretty good money for blow, it seems. While coffee may not bring in the big bucks that cocaine does, many farmers wanna stay in the legal biz.

With fair trade coffee, we send a message that, at the v. least, we’re willing to pay a livable wage for the coffee we drink every day.

Update, 5/25/06: Reader hopeful points out at least one instance in Corsuca, Colombia (PDF), where fair trade’s allowing coffee farmers to stick to legal crops :)

Update, 6/20/06: The NYT reports that coca production’s up by 8% in Colombia: “For anti-drug efforts to be successful, Costa said the United States and Europe must curb cocaine consumption and support alternative crop development programs in South America.” (via Green Prudence)

2 Comments