Ever wondered why you can buy fresh Peruvian blueberries in the dead of winter? The answer, surprisingly, is tied to cocaine. Today on the show, we look at how the War on Drugs led to an American trade policy and a foreign aid initiative that won us blueberries all year round. And 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. This episode was produced by Sylvie Douglis with help from Willa Rubin. It was edited by Marianne McCune and engineered by Jimmy Keeley. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.Find more Planet Money: Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly newsletter.Listen free at these links: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.Music: Source Audio: "Martini Shaker," "You the Man," and "Leisure Girls."Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
How did blueberries become a winter staple in the US?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And I'm Keith Romer. Today on the show, the surprising story of an American initiative in South America. The goal? To curtail cocaine production. The strategy? To deploy drug enforcement agents, seed scientists, USAID, and free trade as weapons in the war on drugs.
The result? After nearly half a century, our year-round consumption of literal drugs tons of Peruvian blueberries.
Today, we're going on a journey to explain how we got all of those cheap Peruvian blueberries. That story begins in the United States. In the 70s and the 80s, cocaine, especially crack cocaine, became a real problem. It was ruining people's lives. It was ruining communities.
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.
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