Glyphosate – also known by its brand name Roundup – has been sprayed aerially in Colombia since 1994 under a US-backed coca eradication plan that came with billions of dollars in funding from Washington.
Colombia’s president Juan Manuel Santos announced Tuesday, September 22, 2015, that the country is overhauling its anti-drug strategy, aiming to boost alternative development efforts and relying more on manual eradication to replace controversial U.S.-backed aerial spraying of the crop used to make cocaine.
“Not everyone will be pleased but I am sure that in the long-term this will be better, because it doesn’t matter if some are discontented”, Santos said.
Even in advance of the spraying program’s end next month, coca production had been rising: After six years of steady or declining production, the amount of land under coca cultivation in Colombia rose 39 percent in 2014 to 112,000 hectares (about 276,000 acres), according to the US government.
The United Nations reported in July that cocaine production in Colombia had risen more than 50 percent from 2013 to 2014, to 442 tonnes. Campesinos will then be entitled to governmental aids and technical advice in order to undertake other agricultural projects suited to the area’s traditions. Cultivating legal crops for five years will grant farmers legal titles to their lands.
A state plan will also be created for the prevention, treatment, and reduction of the dangers and damages of drug use.
The president added that his administration will maintain a tough approach against crime, fighting drug-traffickers, seizing shipments and destroying laboratories, among other actions.
The government and FARC have been holding peace talks in the Cuban capital Havana for almost three years.
Santos has said that the unwillingness of rebel leadership to complete sentences – not necessarily in a prison – has been the biggest obstacle to a peace deal. Imagine what this means.
Instead, the program will seek the voluntary eradication of coca crops, after reaching an agreement with rural communities. “As the slogan says, with peace we will do more”, Santos said, as quoted by the news outlet.
The agreement between Colombia and Venezuela starts with the urgent reinstatement of ambassadors, Aljazeera noted.