Why cocaine has become a lifeline for Peru’s coffee farmers
On one hand, planting coffee creates more work than profit. On the other, coca leaf offers unmatched security to debt-ridden cultivators. A woman sells coca for traditional chewing in the VRAEM, Peru. | Thomas Grisaffi, Author provided
A slump in world coffee prices has pushed farmers in Peru’s central jungle to rip up their plants and replace them with coca leaf – the raw material used in cocaine. This countrywide trend has driven coca leaf production close to 55,000 hectares or up to 500 tonnes of cocaine annually – enough to satisfy annual demand in the United States three times over.
A slump in world coffee prices has pushed farmers in Peru’s central jungle to rip up their plants and replace them with coca leaf – the raw material used in cocaine. This countrywide trend has driven coca leaf production close to 55,000 hectares or up to 500 tons of cocaine annually – enough to satisfy annual demand in the United States three times over.
As drug trafficking routes shrank due to COVID-19 lockdowns, the price of coca leaf plummeted to half its previous levels. Although it has slowly recovered, it finished 2020 by 23% lower than a year earlier. But even so, coca offers poor farmers more security than any other crop as demand is constant.
Winshear Significantly Expands the Coritiri Gold Zone and Initiates Drill Permitting at the Gaban Gold Project in Peru
January 18, 2021 08:00 ET | Source: Winshear Gold Corp. Winshear Gold Corp.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 18, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE)
Winshear Gold Corp. (TSX-V: WINS) has received gold assay results from an additional 414 channel samples taken in October, November, and December of 2020 at the Gaban Gold Project in south-eastern Peru. Gaban is located in the Puno Orogenic Gold Belt (“POGB”) at the juncture of the San Gaban and Inambari Rivers, which then drain into the Madre de Dios basin where extensive alluvial gold mining covers an 1,800 square kilometre area (Figure 1). Winshear is investigating Gaban as a potential hard-rock source for the alluvial gold being mined at Madre de Dios and on the Gaban project itself.