Can coca-leaf relieve the reproductive squeeze?
Modern agriculture is reeling from the effects of an agrarian crisis. Rising costs for farmers, monopolisation of agribusiness, soil degradation, and environmental impacts of climate change have combined to create the perfect storm of theft from people and nature. Agriculture is also no longer a natural process as ecological processes are distorted and subordinated by biotech and industry, technological, genetic and chemical fixes the norm. With the hegemony of globalisation and trade liberalisation, financial capital now controls the harvests, whose interests are not aligned to those of labour. The default economic system for developing countries is one of exporting agricultural goods and raw materials, using this to earn foreign exchange, then importing goods the country needs. These industries are extractive and rarely provide sufficient income to grow an economy, especially as the value of raw materials grows slower relative to the value of the goods produced from them. For example, cane sugar and cacao prices are squeezed, but processed chocolate bars rise, or the price of iron ore remains low, but the price of cars rises. The agrarian crisis manifests itself to peasants via the reproductive squeeze, which harms their ability to continue their way of life as costs rise and earnings worsen. Over time exporting raw materials becomes increasingly less profitable.
Farmers feel this keenly, especially in export-led economies, as despite generating much of the wealth through their labour, they see fewer and fewer returns. They no longer have a voice, rural communities lose population as people are forced to migrate to urban areas looking for work, and the people living and working the land lose their very being. Examining a class-based movement reveals how socio-economical systems are managed to divide winners and losers. Capital and its associated elites are ‘winners’, and peasants the ’losers’ of this global agricultural system, being disadvantaged and pushed to the margins. At the Colombian margins they grow coca leaf.
Economic benefits of coca-leaf farming
Coca-leaf is highly stable and profitable, making it the ideal cash crop. Its cultivation prospers in areas with sufficient labour and land resources but lack sufficient public infrastructure and state presence to facilitate production for legal markets. In Colombia coca-leaf is prevalent in Nariño, Putumayo, and in Norte de Santander, all isolated border regions. Without legal access to markets, peasants in these places looked to illicit (narcotic) means to become re-engaged with global markets. Lacking other viable options, but sufficient work force and appropriate climate, these farmers harness coca-leaf to provide better conditions and higher salaries, despite the risks.
A ‘prohibition premium’ generates super profits captured mainly by traffickers experiencing most of the risk in the supply chain. There is little incentive to attempt to extract every cent of value from the agricultural suppliers, as this would only raise the profits marginally, and risk isolating the narrow group of people willing to cultivate. For staple crops such as coffee and rice, the profits come from targeting gains in production, as distribution entails much less risk and profit. The implication of this is higher and fairer relative price for coca-leaf than one would make from a comparable licit crop. Further, it is not vulnerable to global competition or price fluctuations, being grown in a narrow geographic region of the Andes, and being controlled by cross-border cartels allows for rapid production adaptation to market forces. Insecure poverty is far more painful than poverty alone; having a stable income and security means you know where your meals come from and can plan for the future, so stabilisation of real income for those close to subsistence can be a more powerful goal than achieving a higher average income. Having stable and high prices create greater earnings for farmers, allowing them to survive more effectively thanks to this illicit crop.
Coca-growing peasants can accumulate land more effectively than their counterparts operating in licit economies. The higher yields that coca generates offers peasants a way to generate sufficient income on small landholdings. For example, licit coffee farming requires 14 hectares to produce the same income as one hectare of coca. By operating outside the formal property system, they also retain more autonomy over land and are not vulnerable to dispossession by large agribusinesses. Farmers know the crop can be eradicated by the Colombian State, which does raise the risk of entire harvests being destroyed, which undermines stability. To counter this, they will plant other crops for sustenance and local trade, encouraging limited food sovereignty. They must also be prepared to move production rapidly, so do not seek to own unwieldy plots of land, which prevents large areas being owned by single entities. The smaller plots needed, and lack of competition for the marginal land from large landlords compared to licit crops, allows these peasants to retain more autonomy and land, helping traditional communities to prosper.
Coca is a labour-intensive crop with several harvests throughout the year and maintenance and processing of coca paste – done near fields to create an imperishable yield - all offering employment. More workers can be employed, and these make sufficient money to support themselves, especially if they use time in between harvests to grow other crops or hire from and be hired by multiple cultivation centres. The coca-leaf money can be spent on commodities, creating a form of 'rural cosmopolitanism' with the availability of products like household electrics, motorcycles, and smartphones. Alternatively, it can be used to send children to university, encouraging social mobility and changing young person's life trajectories away from rural (illicit coca) farming, into professional services or other economic sectors. More people can live in profitable rural spaces, possessing some social mobility and purchasing power.
With an economic system built around cash crops, coca-leaf provides an unconventional solution and becomes the alternative development strategy. The factors mentioned here, stable prices, labour intensification, better land accumulation dynamics, resistance to monoculture, and increased commodity purchase power, all help to break the reproductive squeeze. Although prospects for capital accumulation for growers remain moderate, it does provide access to a stable cash income when other options are limited, allowing peasants to subsist successfully.
Far from the rural idyll
As far as most farmers are concerned, participation in the drug trade is not a moral question but simply a way to make a living. However, this only treats coca within a narrow economic sense, and the reliance on cash crops is a precarious method that may work in the short term, but in the longer run, it is not conducive to development or elevated quality of life. The wealth could be better generated elsewhere in other productive sectors, as the externalities that coca generates damage the potential for investment and, in some cases, can lead to Dutch disease. For peasants these capital sources may create better circumstances to escape the reproductive squeeze and live in better conditions, but it comes with such high risk and violence, as well as limiting other forms of development. Neither the poverty without coca-leaf nor the illegal source of income from it provide a rural idyll. This is a challenging compromise for those seeking a good life at the margins.
Any solution to illicit crop markets must deliver sufficient income to the peasants and provide development in the interests of labour (and the environment), not solely capital. Without this, people will continue to be pushed into the margins and work out new sets of relations, all with the support of a profitable and resilient cash crop. From the farmers' perspectives, the routes to reducing coca cultivation are obvious. They need roads and electricity; constant and quality technical assistance; help developing local food systems/markets; and stable links with buyers willing to offer a decent price for their legal goods. To provide this the Colombian state must broadly and reliably intervene with progressive policies such as pro-poor land reform, industrial policy that encourages employment within urban areas, and price stabilisation to regulate income and markets. Now that industrial agriculture is capable of sufficient production to feed the world, the question should become about redistribution and levelling inequality, helping raise peasant agency and reduce victims of poverty. To create a fair system where people can legally live on and work land, free from poverty and violence, structural change and a readjustment of priorities is crucial.
Sources
Acero, C. & Thomson, F. (2022) ‘Everything peasants do is illegal’: Colombian coca growers’ everyday experiences of law enforcement and its impacts on state legitimacy. Third World Quarterly, 43(11), pp. 2674-2692.
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Grisaffi, T. (2019) Coca yes, cocaine no: how Bolivia’s coca growers reshaped democracy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Liliana, M.D. (2018) The ghosts of development past: Deforestation and coca in western Amazonia. IN: The origins of cocaine. London: Routledge, pp. 19–52.
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Thomson, F., Meehan, P. and Goodhand, J. (2024) 'The political economy of illicit drug crops: forum introduction', The Journal of Peasant Studies, 51(4), pp. 763–800. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2024.2328647
Via Campesina (2021) Food sovereignty: A manifesto for the future of our planet. Available at: https://viacampesina.org/en/food-sovereignty-a-manifesto-for-the-future-of-our-planet-la-via-campesina/
Author Biography
Robert McMichael is a recent Global Development MSc Graduate from SOAS, University of London. He is experienced in research, policy, and international education.
