Colombian coca growth 'shocks' UN

Colombia's annual coca crop - the foundation for cocaine - increased by 27 percent last year, a new study says. The data were released by the UN on June 18 in a report which called the finding "a surprise and a shock." It said about 99,000 hectares of coca fields were found in Colombia last year, compared with 78,000 hectares in 2006. Colombia is the world's primary cocaine producer. Coca cultivation also increased in Peru and Bolivia, by four and five per cent respectively, the report said. Colombia has an eradication program, backed by a massive US military aid package, which destroyed about 210,000 hectares of coca in 2007. However, coca fields are virtually back to the level of 2002, when Plan Colombia, the joint US and Colombian initiative to fumigate and manually destroy the country's coca, was in its early stages. Colombian people living in the fumigated areas criticized the program, saying that the herbicides were destroying food crops as well as coca, and causing human health problems. The US has spent more than $5 billion since 2001 to combat cocaine production in Colombia. The cocaine industry helps to fund an armed campaign against the government that has been running for five decades. The Colombian military receives about 80 per cent of the aid and about 20 per cent goes to social projects to ameliorate diversification in production. Production is said to have increased due to quick replanting, and hybrid coca varieties and new coatings limiting the effects of herbicides used by the government to destroy them.