Growing Rice Becoming As Profitable as Coca
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 07.21.08
Bolivians Celebrating Election Results. Image Bear Guerra
For years, the American government has been trying to stomp out the growing of Coca, which is the base ingredient of Cocaine. Also for years, people have complained that American food subsidies and cheap corn exports made it impossible to compete with local crops, so coca became just about the only crop that farmers could make a living on.
Now, soaring food prices are doing what US Government policy failed to do: give farmers an option. Bolivian President Evo Morales, (also president of the coca growers union) has asked coca farmers to start growing rice and corn as a way of "holding down coca production while helping to feed the poorest country in South America."
Rice takes more land and more labour, but has tripled in price in the last year. There is also strong local demand for it, whereas other attempts to substitute products for cocaine involved export crops like bananas, where there was lots of international competition. ::IHT
It is an interesting demonstration of what happens when cheap fuel and subsidies no longer distort the marketplace: prices rise to a level to where it is possible for farmers to make a living growing food for the local market, rather than being forced into growing commodities.
More on Food Subsidies and high food prices:
Peak Everything: Eight Things We Are Running Out Of And Why ...
Rationing Comes to Costco
Peak Food - It's About Strategy :
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
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- Tom Friedman Can't Make Up His Mind
- US Farmer’s Incomes Now Tied More to Ethanol Than Food, Economist Says
- Legislative Strategy, Constitutional Duty, Keys To Overturning Bush Administration "Midnight Regs"
The war on drugs can be won by
~> letting people have the opportunity do something useful with their lives.
Who could have guessed?
The war on drugs can be won by
~> letting people have the opportunity do something useful with their lives.
Who could have guessed?
We're witnessing the great revolution of our era in real time!
The death of oil is causing our machines to be smaller and more efficient; it's making technology harness nature while preserving it; it's making us think about our everyday actions consciously; it's making people more informed and demanding; it's causing a rediscovery of urban life and neighbourhoods but also value the rural farm and woodland more; it's making us grow food close to home or by ourselves and by doing so it's encouraging local economies in historical cheap export-only countries to grow food they can eat and sell between themselves thus ending the cultivation of narcotics!!??
Peak oil winning the drug war, who could have guessed??
I just hope the next president's strategy for Afeghanistan includes growing a useful, local crops in a sustainable way for export to neighbouring Asian countries and for themselves.
Exciting times if we can change in time!
This is one good effect of rising food prices, at least. Who would have thought that the farmers growing the coca plants could be encouraged to grow rice?!