Bolivian farmers switching from coca to coffee beans

They grew just enough of the leaf, which is sacred to the indigenous peoples of South America’s Andes region, to make tea and chew to combat high-altitude exhaustion. That changed in the 20th century, when the U.S. and European appetite for cocaine created an equally insatiable demand for the drug’s key ingredient. Coca harvests exploded, and the plant went from a side crop to an unrivaled source of farmers’ livelihoods. Getting those cocaleros to stop cultivating coca, in fact, seemed as difficult as getting addicts to stop consuming cocaine. “There’s always a market for coca,” says Yungas farmer Lucio Copa. Read Article