In the green hills of Naranjal, a small farming community in Colombia’s Valle del Cauca, the sound of chainsaws cutting down coca bushes has been replaced by the rustle of citrus leaves and the hiss of roasting coffee. Here, more than a hundred families are proving that replacing the drug economy isn’t about sermons or slogans—it’s about buyers, dignity, and time.
From Coca to Coffee, With Buyers Waiting
You can measure hope in seedlings. On the slopes outside Naranjal, rows of cacao and coffee shimmer under the sun—evidence that a gamble on legality can pay off when markets are fundamental and money arrives on time. “The best part is that we’re getting young people out of illegality,” said Diana Cano, president of the Association of Growers of the San Quinini Canyon (Asoculsan), in an interview with EFE.
For decades, children here learned one trade: coca cultivation. It wasn’t a choice; it was an inheritance. Now, Cano says, “teenagers are shadowing agronomists instead of armed lookouts.” They learn how to graft, prune, compost, and market, not how to hide. “Everything we produce has a guaranteed buyer,” she explained. “Legality stops being abstract when it pays on time.”
Asoculsan unites approximately 400 producers, 40 percent of whom are under 30, growing cacao, chili peppers, coffee, and fruits such as passion fruit, lulo, and lemons. Each family plants not for a dream buyer but for a contract that already exists. It is, as Cano says, “certainty replacing fear.”
This isn’t improvisation—it’s infrastructure. The cooperative negotiated directly with Grupo Éxito, Colombia’s largest supermarket chain, now owned by Grupo Calleja of El Salvador. “Éxito buys everything we grow, and that moves the local economy,” Cano told EFE. Trucks that once carried coca paste in secrecy now arrive openly for fruit. Markets, not mantras, are what keep people home.
Markets Before Mantras
For Cano, the pivot began with persistence. “It hasn’t been easy,” she admitted to EFE, describing how she lobbied Grupo Éxito’s leadership until they agreed to visit Naranjal. That visit changed everything. Instead of speeches about substitution, farmers got something concrete: a purchase order.
In the past, governments urged growers to abandon coca but rarely offered alternatives. “We don’t sell more because we can’t produce more,” Cano said, laughing at the reversal. The bottleneck isn’t demand; it’s capacity. For once, supply chains are being built backward—from store shelf to soil.
This is the crucial lesson development experts keep missing. You can’t preach your way out of a narco economy. People need what Coca-Cola once provided: stability, a steady cash flow, and a sense that their efforts lead somewhere. The difference in Naranjal is that “somewhere” is now legal. When fruit trucks replace armed buyers and receipts replace rumors, farmers don’t just survive—they breathe.
“This is the proof that rural Colombia can stand on its own if someone commits to buy what we grow,” Cano said. And that shift is catching on.
A Different Drug Policy
At the national level, Colombia is rethinking its long war on drugs. For decades, U.S.-funded eradication campaigns sent soldiers and planes to burn coca fields from the air, but the roots always grew back. Now, President Gustavo Petro has shifted strategy from eradication to substitution—from punishment to partnership.
“Substitution is not simply changing one plant for another,” said Gloria Miranda, head of the government’s Directorate of Substitution of Illicit-Use Crops, in remarks to EFE. “It is transforming entire economies—from production to commercialization—a full productive chain that returns dignity to communities and opens sustainable development opportunities in territories hit by narcotrafficking.”
That dignity begins with risk reduction. The people most crushed by Colombia’s drug trade have always been small farmers—women, single parents, and families caught between guerrillas, cartels, and hunger. When substitution programs offer technical help, credit, and guaranteed buyers, they don’t just replace a crop—they replace fear with predictability.
Petro’s approach may be controversial abroad, but in Naranjal it feels pragmatic. It treats coca not as a moral failure but as an economic symptom. The cure is structure: cooperatives, logistics, and contracts that let farmers plan years, not days. As Miranda put it, “The key is to rebuild entire economies, not just fields.”
Measuring Progress in Tons—and in Tomorrows
Progress here doesn’t always look like policy; sometimes it seems like pallets of oranges. Grupo Éxito currently buys around 20 tons of produce from Asoculsan every month, according to company president Carlos Calleja, who told EFE that business can be “the tractor that pulls progress.” He believes sustainability requires models, not miracles—replicable systems that align profit with peace.
The numbers aren’t huge by global standards, but they are revolutionary in context. Every kilo sold is a blow against the logic of illegality. “We have proof that when everyone has the will, we can move forward,” said Gloria García, a community leader from El Plateado in neighboring Cauca, also speaking with EFE. Her town, once a coca stronghold, is now pushing to join the same initiative. “Purchases are assured, so there is no excuse not to work,” she said.
That phrase—“no excuse”—has become a mantra in Naranjal. When the state guarantees rights, and the private sector guarantees demand, communities take care of the rest. Diana Cano isn’t waiting for aid; she’s managing a supply chain. Her cooperative’s youth aren’t fleeing north; they’re building futures south.
Every invoice is a small act of rebellion against despair. Each hectare of cacao is an acre reclaimed for the law—and for hope. What started as crop substitution has evolved into something larger: an economy that rewards patience over peril.
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If Colombia continues to scale that model—if other valleys and towns follow Naranjal’s lead—the country will harvest more than just fruit and beans. It will be harvest time: a time when children spend in classrooms, a time when farmers spend planning for next season, and a time when communities spend awake under daylight instead of under curfew.