Food shortage having surprise side effect (Bolivia)

[Judi Lynn]

Food shortage having surprise side effect
5:00AM Thursday July 24, 2008

Soaring food prices may achieve what the United States has spent millions of dollars trying to do: persuade Bolivian farmers to sow their fields with less potent crops than cocaine's raw ingredient.

The unlikely advocate for change is Bolivian President Evo Morales who, as leader of a powerful coca growers' union, fought US crop-substitution programmes for two decades.

But rising grain prices and food shortages have made him reconsider. He's now asking coca farmers to supplement their crops with rice and corn as a way of holding down coca production while helping to feed South America's poorest country.

US programmes have often banned the planting of coca - sacred to Andean peoples and the base ingredient of cocaine - as a condition for farmers to receive aid to try new crops.

More:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10523152