Glyphosate is a powerful herbicide that Colombia used in its Aspersión Aérea program to fumigate coca plantations from 1994 to 2015, before the Constitutional Court suspended it over health concerns. Now, as new president Abelardo de la Espriella settles into office, the debate is back. Weeks into his term, he has decided to repeal the ban. It seems increasingly likely that Colombia will return to the use of glyphosate, considering how hard the Trump administration is pushing for it and how critically high cocaine production levels are. De la Espriella defends this stance by arguing that glyphosate is cheap, fast, and has no real alternative, as manual eradication is dangerous and has limited reach in remote coca-growing areas.
However, this argument only holds up if you ignore who actually pays for it. The direct costs ( aircraft, chemicals, pilots) fall on the government, and by extension, taxpayers. Yet, the real cost falls on farmers whose legal crops get wiped out along with the coca, on rural communities dealing with higher rates of cancer and respiratory illness, and on ecosystems that get contaminated. Meanwhile, cartel leaders, the people actually profiting off coca cultivation, remain unaffected by this transaction.
None of this is reflected in the government’s “cheap” price tag for eradication. In economic terms, this is a negative production externality: the true social cost of an activity exceeds the private cost paid by the decision-maker. The relevant question, therefore, is not simply whether glyphosate is cheaper than manual eradication, but whether it remains cheaper once the costs imposed on farmers, communities, and the environment are included.
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