Pubdate: Wed, 28 Aug 2002
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Jill Carroll, Staff Reporter Of The Wall Street Journal

CAN CHOCOLATE HELP TO FIGHT WAR ON DRUGS?

Scientists are working in government labs and at sites deep in the Andean 
jungle to develop a new weapon in the war on drugs: a superrobust 
cocoa-bean tree.

They hope that a disease-resistant cocoa-bean tree will one day prove 
superprofitable, making drug crops such as coca, the source of the raw 
material used to make cocaine, less attractive for farmers to grow.

Nothing would please the U.S. chocolate industry more than a steady stream 
of cocoa beans from strong trees. That is why the Chocolate Manufacturers 
Association is partially funding the project, which is being run out of the 
State Department. The Agriculture Department also is taking part, 
contributing money and expertise in plant genetics and selective breeding.

Working in Miami, at the USDA's Subtropical Horticulture Research Station, 
scientists are charged with creating the new and improved cacao tree (the 
proper name of the plant that produces cocoa beans). Four USDA scientists 
are studying the genes of various types of cacao trees, trying to figure 
out which ones help make the tree less susceptible to disease. After they 
identify these genes on the tree's genome, they will breed the trees and 
grow them in plots in Miami. Only then can they be planted in test fields 
in Costa Rica, Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador.

Ray Schnell, a geneticist heading up the project, says they expect to 
deliver the fortified trees to cocoa-bean farmers by as soon as 2010. The 
farmers would be able to graft the new trees onto the trunks of existing 
trees to hasten growth, he says.

South America used to be a dominant supplier of cocoa beans. But starting 
in the late 1980s, the continent's crop was eaten by tree-munching fungi 
with common names such as "witches' broom" and "frosty pod." Brazil's cocoa 
bean yields dropped 42% from 1991 to 2001, according to the United Nations. 
Shrinking supplies prompted the U.S. chocolate industry to switch much of 
its buying to sources in western Africa and Indonesia.

Now, the industry is welcoming the possibility of increased supplies of 
South American beans. To create their particular chocolate flavors, 
companies depend on steady supplies of many different types of beans, some 
of which grow only in South America. "You can find good cocoa in all parts 
of the world," says Bill Guyton, vice president for research at the 
American Cocoa Research Institute, an arm of the chocolate manufacturers 
group. But Latin America "is important because you have flavor beans you 
don't get elsewhere."

Behind the supercocoa project are two troubling trends: Cocoa prices and 
plantings of cacao trees are falling in South America, while prices of the 
cocaine precursor, coca, and plantings of it are rising. Coca prices passed 
the $1-a-pound mark in 2001, according to a 2002 United Nations report on 
drugs. Meantime cocoa bean prices hit a low of about 40 cents a pound in 
2000, according to the International Cocoa Organization, a United 
Kingdom-based promotion and research group.

The discouraging economics have U.S. government officials worried that 
farmers in countries such as Ecuador, which relies heavily on cocoa-bean 
production, will turn to drug crops to survive. "There is a good chance of 
spillage" of the drug trade into Ecuador from neighbors such as Colombia, 
says Al Matano, deputy director of the State Department's Office of the 
Americas Program. "We believe if you can [give] the farmer a crop that can 
give them a better-than-sustainable living -- but without the criminal 
element -- they would do it," he says.

Total funding for the tree-development program is starting out small -- 
only a few million dollars a year for two years. The goal is to leave 
farmers with a crop they will stick with after U.S. aid money runs out. 
Economic-development projects often face problems when an alternative crop 
turns out to lack a strong market or doesn't grow well in the area. Crops 
also can spoil or get damaged before reaching market because of bad roads.

Government officials hope a stronger cacao tree will offer a better 
solution. They are counting on chocolate-loving Americans to provide a 
dependable market for the beans. And they are confident the cacao tree, 
indigenous to South America, will thrive there. Cocoa beans stay fresh 
longer than fruits and vegetables, and so slow transportation doesn't 
present a major concern.

But even if the tougher trees can be developed successfully in the lab, 
farmers will have to find ways to survive during the several years it will 
take the trees to grow on their farms. All the while, they may face the 
wrath of local drug lords: Farmers are often threatened by drug traffickers 
if they refuse to grow drug crops.

Chocolate-industry officials are keeping their distance from the 
drug-interdiction aspects of the program. Mr. Guyton, of the chocolate 
research group, says it is "too premature" to talk about possible safety 
issues that may arise for chocolate-industry people in the region.

Adolfo Franco, assistant administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean 
at the U.S. Agency for International Development, says it is a good idea to 
fight the spread of coca farming by addressing the reasons it happens. 
"It's when there is no security on the ground -- no sense of community ... 
a lack of alternatives -- that people turn to this," he says. USAID, which 
runs most of the government's foreign-aid projects, isn't involved in the 
cocoa-tree effort but hopes to draw on what the scientists learn for other 
projects.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom