Bolivia To Make Compost From Illegal Coca

As a stimulant in humans its properties are well known. Less well documented are the powers of the coca leaf to perk up the average plant.
But now the authorities in Bolivia are experimenting with turning illegal coca harvests into organic fertilizer, and they say the results look promising.
Every year Bolivia confiscates almost 700 tonnes of illegal coca from drug traffickers. The government's coca director, Luis Cutipa, believes that turning this excess into fertiliser will deprive criminals of their raw material for making cocaine, much of which goes to Brazil and on to Europe. He is optimistic that compost made from coca can be made on an industrial scale.
Seized coca is held in warehouses and government buildings, and even in Cutipa's office. Outside La Paz, in a coca-growing region of the Yungas forest, Lucio Copa is working on the pilot project, testing the compost on coca bushes. He says vegetables and fruit trees should also do well with this fertilizer.
Miguel Callisaya, head of the project, claims the coca leaves, when mixed with household rubbish, tree leaves and chicken manure, are the best in world. "It is high in nutrients. It's of better quality than earthworm compost."
Plants seem to thrive on the fertilizer; where it was made, weeds are growing larger and taller than in a neighboring field.
But the project could do little to resolve Bolivia's growing drug problem.
Kathryn Ledebur, director of the Andean Information Network, a Bolivian NGO, says that though the coca compost campaign is laudable it will have little impact on Bolivia's anti-drugs effort, the success of which relies far more on demand in the west than on supply at home.
from The Guardian