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c Origin

Story/ Karl Wienhold

FROM

COCAINE

TO

COFFEE

FARMING

C olombia is a geographically and culturally from subsistence to economic agriculture, the planting of

the crop that will maximize currency income. With food
diverse country without one history of devel-
opment, but rather many. Some areas of Co-
lombian agricultural land have been planted more readily available for purchase for reasonable prices,
and the opportunity to plant crops for sale rather than for
with cash crops like bananas, coffee, and sugar cane since family consumption, small farmers in Colombia have plunged
colonial times, first on large estates, then in some areas into the monetary economy and been placed at the mercy
broken up into smallholder plots, while others remain of global commodity and currency markets, of which they
under the control of wealthy families and corporate enti- typically have little understanding. The logic is that one could
ties. Other areas remained largely untouched until after A: plant food crops and raise animals so that the family can
colonial times and were subsequently settled by home- eat, or B: plant a cash crop, use the some of the currency
steaders, primarily for subsistence agriculture. earned to buy the same amount of food, and then have some
As a result of the green revolution (agriculture techni- currency left over to buy other things. The issue is that cash
fication and the use of synthetic fertilizers), developed crops are vulnerable, dependent on faraway markets, and
country food crop subsidies, and the opening of markets to when they fail to provide the needed currency income, the
free trade in much of Latin America, there has been a shift family is left without currency and without food.

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