Erika Barris
Appearances
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
This is Planet Money from NPR. Wow. This has been a roller coaster of a week. Trade as we have known it for decades has been completely turned upside down. We are in a legit trade war with many countries. And underneath all of these tariffs is the international flow of actual things. All these goods that people buy and sell to each other across borders and oceans.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
So when he came back in 2011, he had all this expertise and he was able to put all his new skills into this new economy that had cropped up. He landed a job at one of the biggest producers and agricultural export companies in Peru, Camposol.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Do you remember the first blueberry you ever had?
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Did you ask anybody what it was or did you just eat it?
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Peru in South America, more than 3,000 miles away from this grocery store. When I was growing up, this was unheard of. You could not get fresh, cheap blueberries in the winter. You pretty much couldn't get any blueberries out of season. And now you can get a fresh blueberry in your local grocery store every single day of the year.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
You have probably had a Biloxi blueberry. It is kind of big. It's water balloon round. It's, you know, crunchy, firm, tart.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
So Jose Antonio started cold-calling blueberry brands like Driscoll's.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Jose Antonio left Peru, again, with this goal, to own the entire supply chain. While a team in Peru started converting asparagus canning factories to fresh blueberry packing facilities, he moved on to the next step.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
You're talking shipping containers, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're not talking clamshells. Okay. No, no, no.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Costco's berry buyer. Yes, that is a real job. He was very hesitant about this Biloxi blueberry.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
If you, like me, have ever wondered why that is, why it seems like blueberries from Peru are everywhere in a way they just were not like 10 or 15 years ago, we can tell you. The reason why is cocaine. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Erika Barris.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Oprah, she had been talking about blueberries on her show. Blueberries.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Without realizing it, Jose Antonio had picked an amazing time to enter the American blueberry market. He had tapped into the American fruit zeitgeist, the Oprah effect. Hard to measure, but easy to feel.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Other companies on the coast also grew more blueberries. And today, Peru is the world's biggest exporter of blueberries. And all this happened in the last 10 years. In the U.S., during about the same period, there's been a 91% increase in per capita consumption of blueberries.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
That's about right. And who knows? That may change now that there's going to be at least a 10% tariff on almost every country in the world, including Peru. Which is why looking back at this particular history of free trade is so interesting.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Now, that huge change in Peru introduced some tough competition for American farmers, especially asparagus farmers. They took a huge hit. And the whole program also cost American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars over decades. Robert Rogowski, who chronicled this effort across the Andean region, says one way to look at the payoff is that It brought Peru closer to us.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Our two countries are politically aligned. What about the war on drugs? What about that part of the program? Was that successful?
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
He says if you look at the big picture in the Andes region at Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia, the drug trade there no longer dominates the economy the way it did.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
But drug markets have a way of winding their way into eternal existence. Those coca farmers in the mountains of Peru, they didn't all move over to coffee. And there's been some coca farming in new parts of the country, like the rainforest.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
And an unintended consequence of so much legit shipping out of the country? Well, sometimes hidden in those big old steel containers, there might be some cocaine riding shotguns. For more on trade and tariffs, check out Planet Money's homepage. We've got articles looking at how much the new tariffs will raise prices and shows on everything from diamonds to potatoes to why you bought your couch.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
We've linked to it in the show notes. Also, if you have any trade or tariff questions, let us know. We're at planetmoneyatnpr.org. And the best way to support Planet Money and the work that we do is to become a member of Planet Money Plus or NPR Plus. You get sponsor free listening and bonus episodes and it really means a lot to us. It is super helpful.
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How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
You can learn more or sign up at plus.npr.org. And thank you to everyone who has already signed up.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Thank you to Robert Koopman, Paul Guttenberg, Lawrence Ruby, Javier Morales, Everett Eisenstadt, and Todd Egan. I'm Keith Romer. And I'm Erica Barris. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
The result? After nearly half a century, our year-round consumption of literal drugs tons of Peruvian blueberries.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
It was so bad that there was a war to fight it, the war on drugs. Drug use was punished in a much harsher way than it had been before. A lot of people, disproportionately Black people, were put in jail. There were also all kinds of campaigns to get drug users to stop. Or not start at all. You might remember to say no, or this is your brain on drugs, or crack is whack.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Those efforts were trying to hit the demand side for cocaine, and they were mostly failing.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Robert was the chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission. And part of his job there was to serve as kind of the archivist for this whole cocaine to blueberries saga.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
The U.S. government wanted farmers to stop, to stop growing coca plants.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Were they actually going and ripping the plants out?
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
You seem to say, oh, whatever, that's just another day.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
So today I'm going to tell you the story of one very small thing, one good from one place whose very existence in the U.S. is intertwined with our history of free trade. Oh, excuse me. I'm just going to reach right past you here. Winter is finally over. And the thing that has kept my spirits up over this long, cold, dreary winter was one particular fruit. Blueberries, blueberries, blueberries.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
The carrot wasn't going to be a carrot, also not a blueberry, but the U.S. needed to give farmers some incentive to grow something other than coca, something they could export, something that American consumers would want to buy. Otherwise, why would they switch?
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
The U.S. government enlisted help from some less warlike agencies like USAID and also Congress. The idea was to make Peruvian farmers our economic partners.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
This side of fighting the war on drugs was more of a soft power approach.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
And the U.S. government didn't just knock out the tariffs. They were also sending lots of assistance for infrastructure, roads, ports, seed research to figure out the right crop for export to the U.S. Because at the time, Americans weren't feeding for Peru's native crops like quinoa the way they are now.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
First, they tried to convince the coca farmers in those mountains, hey, look how well this coffee can grow in your fields. That land was fertile, lush peaks and valleys, every shade of green possible. Warm, birds, wild animals, all of it. The problem was the farmers could make 10 times more farming coca than other crops.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
I talked to a man named Gustavo Guerrero Pareto who lived to the north of that mountainous region. Back then, he was managing a flower farm, but the farm couldn't keep its workers because there were militant groups that were sowing chaos. And a lot of the workers were leaving the area to go farm coca. Coca was the dominant economy.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Gustavo says in Peru at the time, there was a huge economic crisis. And he told me between the drug dealers, the militants, and the corruption, the violence was so bad, often when he'd leave the relatively calm... also heavily policed area where he lived, he'd see something terrible. I just want a flag. What you're about to hear is very disturbing.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
He says one Sunday he was with his wife and infant daughter. They were taking a trip to the big city.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
And along the road, they came across four bodies hanging from a tree. With a note that read, this is for being a traitor. Horrible.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
horrible for Gustavo, for the country as a whole. And the security situation was also a major impediment to the kind of economic change the U.S. was trying to encourage.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Gustavo got interested too. He had a friend who was experimenting with a new irrigation system down there. Gustavo told me he and his family left their beautiful home for these sand dunes. And he says there was nothing more extreme than going from that lush green land full of vegetation surrounded by snow-capped mountains to the Peruvian desert. There was not a single tree. Everything was dry.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Love me some blueberries. They're delicious, which is why I am kind of squeezing in front of someone's shopping cart at my local grocery store to fill my cart. I'm going to get like one, two. Sorry, am I in your way? They're just $3.50 a pint. Three, four. I'm going to buy four of these. And curious thing. Every floppy plastic container I pick off the shelf says the same thing. Origin, Peru.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
USAID was working with the Peruvian government to figure out what export could be Peru's big one.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
And what they came up with was not blueberries. They decided, bueno, asparagus could grow.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
I love asparagus. Love it with lemon. Love it with butter.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Now, we should say, it's not like everybody just got an American seed packet and then everything changed. The successful planting of these American asparagus seeds coincided with some major shifts in the Peruvian economy. New laws making it easier for businesses to operate, fewer restrictions on seasonal workers and on how much land companies could buy. And there were tax incentives to grow food.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Thousands of people began moving from the mountainous green coca-growing part of Peru to work in the asparagus fields on the coast. Suddenly, this deserted desert that Gustavo had moved to was his hot garden bed of activity. And he says watching this was amazing.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
People bought houses, opened bank accounts, built up credit. Things that seemed impossible just years earlier. So this this changed a lot in the country. And Gustavo was a part of it. He became an asparagus farmer, too.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Which meant the project worked. This Aid for Trade initiative helped create a new Peruvian industry supported by American consumers. At least for a while. Because after a couple decades, there was a lot more competition. Americans were now getting cheaper asparagus from Mexico and China. The asparagus market became oversaturated.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Because USAID wasn't working along the coast anymore, where the asparagus industry had flourished for so long. The aid workers were elsewhere, still trying to lure coca farmers into growing something legit. So the big asparagus companies on the coast, they had to find something new to export on their own. After the break, the little blue orb that could.
Planet Money
How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
And the answer to the question, did all the new fruits and veggies ever replace cocaine? All those years asparagus was booming, this Peruvian businessman named José Antonio Gómez Bazán was not there to see it. He was away from the country, so his memory of the coast before the boom was just that, a coast.