Changes in the leadership of Colombia’s Illicit Crop Substitution Program, continued alerts about problems in its implementation, and criminal violence raise doubts about the future of the initiative.
The Comprehensive National Crop Substitution Program in Colombia (PNIS) is the materialization of one of the points of the peace agreements between the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed in 2016. The objective of the program was reduce, through substitution, the amount of coca crops in the country, and—with this—deprive criminal groups of the raw material necessary for cocaine production.
However, its implementation has been plagued by major obstacles. Colombia continues to have the largest number of coca hectares in the world and has broken records in cocaine production in recent years.
In mid-May, Gustavo Petro’s government presented Gloria Miranda as the new national director of the Directorate for the Substitution of Crops for Illicit Use, the entity in charge of implementing the PNIS. Until then, Ella Miranda served as director of Drug Policy and Related Activities within the Ministry of Justice.
The appointment of Miranda as the new director responds, among other things, to criticism of the government for the poor execution of the program. In April, in a political control debate in Congress, it was announced that during 2023 only 5% of the budget allocated to the implementation of the PNIS would be executed.
SEE ALSO: Supporting the substitution of coca crops: a risky bet for leaders in Putumayo, Colombia
The lack of implementation has also deteriorated the Petro government’s relationship with communities in coca-growing areas, and has left communities in coca-growing areas vulnerable to organized crime. Coca growers, in the departments of Norte de Santander and Córdoba, announced that they will go on strike due to non-compliance with the substitution program and the families that signed substitution agreements continue to demand answers.
InSight Crime presents some of the key points of the debate on coca crops in Colombia, the role that organized crime has had in the implementation of the PNIS and the possible future scenario of substitution.
A road full of obstacles
In 2017, when the creation of the PNIS was announced, many experts considered it the most ambitious coca crop substitution strategy used in Colombia to date. The PNIS was to function through agreements between families and the national government: families would eradicate their crops, and, in exchange, the government would provide subsidies and provide technical advice to undertake short- and long-term productive projects.
“It was an excessively ambitious program with enormous objectives,” Luis Felipe Cruz, a researcher at DeJusticia, a legal and social research center, explained to InSight Crime.
The problems of the PNIS were growing. Firstly, the lack of articulation between the PNIS leadership and the Ministry of Agriculture and other institutions hindered the program’s activities. Furthermore, the fact that there was no clear budget allocation and that there was no design with a differential or territorial approach affected its implementation, according to a report carried out by the Center for Security and Drug Studies of the University of the Andes.
This situation gave criminal groups, with a presence in coca-growing areas, an opportunity to legitimize their discourse about the government’s failure to comply with the peace agreements and increased the communities’ distrust of the government.
Furthermore, failures in the implementation of the program put the social leaders who supported the substitution at special risk. The illegal armed groups saw these leaderships as an obstacle to one of their main businesses. After the signing of the collective agreements within the framework of the PNIS, the murder rate of social leaders increased by 546%, according to a study carried out by economist Lucas Marín Llanes.
The current strategy of the national government, reflected in its drug policy document, consists of executing the program, and sending a signal to the communities of its willingness to comply with the agreement. The execution of the program consists of complying with payments of 36 million pesos—about US$9,000—to the families that had joined. However, beyond payments, the commitments to productive projects that had been established initially are not seen on the horizon.
But, the reality in the coca-growing areas is more complex and these measures are not going to solve the violence that plagues the communities, where criminal groups have strengthened in the last year.
A missed opportunity
In parallel with the implementation of the PNIS, there have been important changes in the coca market at the territorial level due to an evolution in the criminal panorama.
Since the second half of 2022, farmers in departments that concentrate most of the country’s coca crops, such as Norte de Santander, Cauca, Nariño and Putumayo, reported a collapse in the prices of the coca leaf and base paste. of coca, 45% and 30% respectively.
SEE ALSO: Coca market crisis in Colombia will not impact cocaine trafficking
There are several factors that influence the fluctuation of coca prices in the territories, such as the increase in input prices and the saturation of drug trafficking routes. However, one of the key aspects was the departure of the FARC from the territories, in 2017, after the signing of the peace agreement.
The FARC dominated the market and prices of coca leaf and base paste in the areas where they exercised territorial control. After his departure, the other criminal groups have not been able to fill the power vacuum. On the contrary, territorial disputes between criminal groups such as the National Liberation Army (ELN), the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC) and the FARC dissidents have further exacerbated the fall in prices, since international buyers do not They dare to visit these areas due to the lack of security guarantees.
The collapse in prices has led to more coca growers being willing to substitute their crops. In areas of the department of Cauca, some farmers have turned to planting coffee in response to the crisis in coca leaf prices. However, this is a window of opportunity that has not yet been taken advantage of by the government.
An uncertain future
The current drug policy proposed a structural change regarding the fight against drug trafficking in the country, but the future of the substitution is unclear.
SEE ALSO: The successes and challenges of Colombia’s ambitious drug policy
Although the policy focuses on the persecution of international cocaine trafficking networks and not on persecuting small coca growers, it has also distanced itself from the substitution approach. According to the government, these programs have focused on short-term agreements, leaving aside key structural aspects to address the dependence of certain territories on illicit economies.
In this scenario, debates have gained strength that propose legal uses for the coca leaf and that can be alternatives to substitution. This has been one of the main flags of the current government regarding the coca issue.
At the end of 2023, the Colombian Agricultural Institute (ICA) granted the first registration for the production of organic fertilizer composed of coca leaves, grown in the departments of Cauca and Huila. In addition, indigenous, peasant and Afro-Colombian associations have innovated in the use of the coca leaf for the production of food and beverages, fabric dyes, and fertilizers.
The creation of alternative economies is an important opportunity. A member of international cooperation—who spoke to InSight Crime on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the subject—mentioned that beyond substituting one crop for another, strategies can focus on replacing illegal economies with legal economies, which which can translate into boosting economic opportunities beyond agriculture.
However, he pointed out that if the State does not manage to replace one economy with another, that vacuum will continue to be filled by criminal groups and illegal economies. This is something that is already happening in some coca-growing territories where, given the drop in coca prices, growers have migrated to illegal mining.
Main image: Peasants carry loads of coca leaves harvested in Colombia. Credit: AP
