The most important factors are crop prices and coca eradication levels.The higher the return from alternative crops, the more likely the area under coca cultivation and coca supply will decrease.Moreover,the eradication also induces farmers to switch from coca to alternative crops.Farmers interested in getting out of the drug trade are also now exposed to criminal groups jockeying for influence.The government has tried to provide alternatives to farmers, but those efforts have come up short.In Colombia, extensive coca cultivation is a recent phenomenon. Coca cultivation rose as an export crop during the crisis in the mid and late 1970s. You probably usually make more with almost any other crop, but it's always a different crop. Sometimes it's coca. Sometimes ... something else might be getting a better price than coca, but coca never goes down," Isacson told Business Insider. "It's just this always above-average price. It's like an insurance policy for them."
The government has tried alternate-crop development and what have you, but it's never worked, because growing breadfruit, bananas, and other crops does not come close to fetching the prices that coca does," said Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
The value of coca increases dramatically as it is refined and moves toward consumer markets.
