How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries

Summary

Planet Money: How the War on Drugs Got Us... Blueberries

Release Date: April 4, 2025
Host: Erica Barris and Keith Romer
Guests: Robert Rogowski (Chief Economist, US International Trade Commission), Gustavo Guerrero Pareto (Peruvian Businessman)

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Introduction: The Unexpected Fruition of a War on Drugs

Erica Barris opens the episode by juxtaposing the abundance of year-round blueberries in U.S. grocery stores with the historical context of the War on Drugs. She sets the stage for exploring how U.S. initiatives in Peru, aimed at curtailing cocaine production, inadvertently fostered a thriving blueberry industry.

“Why it seems like blueberries from Peru are everywhere in a way they just were not... the reason why is cocaine.”
— Erica Barris [00:33]

---

The Andean Strategy: Targeting the Supply Side

Keith Romer delves into the U.S. strategy during the 1970s and 80s to combat the burgeoning cocaine problem. The focus was on dismantling the supply chain by eradicating coca plants in Peru and neighboring countries.

“We gave them technology to identify where these crops were being grown. They would send troops in and then they would just go in and burn it up or destroy it.”
— Robert Rogowski [06:29]

Despite aggressive measures, the entrenched drug cartels and the economic reliance on coca cultivation made the eradication efforts challenging.

---

Aid for Trade: The Economic Incentive to Switch Crops

To counter the resilience of coca farmers, the U.S. introduced "Aid for Trade" initiatives. This approach combined military enforcement with economic incentives to encourage farmers to adopt alternative, legal crops.

“A good war policy is destroy the enemy, but create something that incentivizes that enemy to do something else that makes them an ally.”
— Robert Rogowski [07:37]

The strategy involved eliminating tariffs on products from Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru to stimulate legitimate trade and provide farmers with profitable alternatives to coca.

---

Transition to Asparagus: The First Fruit of the Policy

The initial success story was asparagus. USAID collaborated with Peruvian farmers to cultivate asparagus, leveraging their favorable growing conditions and the growing American market demand.

“Thousand of people began moving from the mountainous, green, coca growing part of Peru to work in the asparagus fields on the coast.”
— Erica Barris [14:25]

This shift revitalized local economies, reduced reliance on coca, and established Peru as a significant asparagus exporter. American companies like Del Monte transitioned their asparagus operations from the U.S. to Peru, capitalizing on lower costs and favorable growing conditions.

---

The Rise of Blueberries: An Unexpected Outcome

Years later, Jose Antonio Gomez Bassan returned to Peru with extensive experience from international fruit industries. Tasked with diversifying exports beyond asparagus, he identified blueberries as a viable candidate.

“I told them, mark my words, our country is going to be the largest blueberry producer and exporter in the world.”
— Gustavo Guerrero Pareto [22:09]

Despite initial skepticism from American blueberry brands, blind taste tests proved the superiority and consistency of the Peruvian Biloxi blueberry variety. This breakthrough secured contracts with major supermarkets like Costco, scaling up Peru's blueberry production exponentially.

“Suddenly, Peru is the world's biggest exporter of blueberries. And all this happened in the last 10 years.”
— Keith Romer [25:31]

---

Economic Transformation and Free Trade Impacts

The combined efforts of military enforcement, development aid, and economic incentives transformed Peru's agricultural landscape. From exporting $60 million worth of fruits and vegetables in 1990, Peru's exports surged to approximately $7 billion, encompassing a diverse range of products including mangoes, avocados, cocoa, and coffee.

“Peruvians now grow and export not just asparagus and blueberries, but also a lot of mangoes and avocados and cocoa and coffee.”
— Keith Romer [26:10]

However, this transformation also introduced stiff competition for American farmers and required substantial investment from U.S. taxpayers, costing hundreds of millions of dollars over decades.

---

Mixed Outcomes of the War on Drugs

Robert Rogowski provides a nuanced perspective on the War on Drugs' effectiveness. While the U.S. initiatives reduced the dominance of drug cartels in Peru, coca cultivation persists, particularly in new regions like the rainforest.

“We are asking you to get rid of your main foreign income operation and replace it with something else... [the] drug trade no longer dominates the economy the way it did.”
— Robert Rogowski [27:31]

The cessation of significant USAID funding under President Trump in early 2025 has led to a resurgence of coca farming alongside the thriving legitimate export industries, indicating an ongoing struggle to fully eradicate illegal drug production.

---

Unintended Consequences: Cocaine in the Trade Pipeline

The massive increase in legitimate trade also facilitated the smuggling of cocaine within shipping containers, embedding the illegal drug trade within the legitimate economy.

“Some cocaine riding shotgun... hidden in those big old steel containers.”
— Erica Barris [28:59]

This blurring of boundaries underscores the complexity of combating illegal economies embedded within legitimate trade frameworks.

---

Conclusion: A Mixed Legacy of Economic and Social Transformation

The War on Drugs' Aid for Trade initiative yielded significant economic growth and diversification for Peru, transforming it into a major exporter of blueberries and other agricultural products. However, the persistence of coca cultivation and the integration of illicit trade within legitimate exports reflect the challenges of completely dismantling entrenched illegal economies.

“So Peru is successfully exporting a whole lot of blueberries and still a whole lot of coca.”
— Keith Romer [28:50]

The episode concludes by highlighting the intertwined nature of economic policies and their far-reaching, sometimes unintended, consequences on global trade and local livelihoods.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• “Why it seems like blueberries from Peru are everywhere in a way they just were not... the reason why is cocaine.” — Erica Barris [00:33]
• “We gave them technology to identify where these crops were being grown. They would send troops in and then they would just go in and burn it up or destroy it.” — Robert Rogowski [06:29]
• “A good war policy is destroy the enemy, but create something that incentivizes that enemy to do something else that makes them an ally.” — Robert Rogowski [07:37]
• “I told them, mark my words, our country is going to be the largest blueberry producer and exporter in the world.” — Gustavo Guerrero Pareto [22:09]
• “Peruvians now grow and export not just asparagus and blueberries, but also a lot of mangoes and avocados and cocoa and coffee.” — Keith Romer [26:10]
• “We are asking you to get rid of your main foreign income operation and replace it with something else... [the] drug trade no longer dominates the economy the way it did.” — Robert Rogowski [27:31]
• “Some cocaine riding shotgun... hidden in those big old steel containers.” — Erica Barris [28:59]

---

Key Takeaways

• Strategic Shift: The U.S. War on Drugs in Peru combined military enforcement with economic incentives to eradicate coca cultivation, promoting alternative cash crops through Aid for Trade.
• Economic Diversification: Initiatives led to the rise of asparagus and later blueberries as major Peruvian exports, significantly boosting the country's economy.
• Unintended Effects: While reducing the dominance of drug cartels, coca farming persists, and legitimate trade routes have been exploited for smuggling cocaine.
• Policy Implications: The cessation of USAID funding poses challenges for sustaining economic alternatives to coca, highlighting the complexity of disentangling illegal economies from legitimate trade.

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For more insights on trade and its multifaceted impacts, visit Planet Money's homepage.

Transcript

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[Erica Barris]

This is Planet Money from NPR. Wow, this has been a rollercoaster 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 US Is intertwined with our history of free trade. Oh, excuse me. Just gonna 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, 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 Erica Barris.

[Keith Romer]

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.

[Erica Barris]

The result, after nearly half a century. Our year round consumption of literal tons of Peruvian blueberries.

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[Keith Romer]

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.

[Erica Barris]

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 just say no or this is your brain on drugs or crack is whack. Those efforts were trying to hit the demand side for cocaine, and they were mostly failing.

[Keith Romer]

At the same time, there was this other effort to target the supply side.

[Erica Barris]

Where were these drugs coming from?

[Robert Rogowski]

I don't know the specifics except what I saw in the movies.

[Erica Barris]

I've seen those movies too.

[Keith Romer]

That's Robert Rogowski and he knows more than he's letting on.

[Robert Rogowski]

It was a Columbia thing. It was the Colombian drug cartels.

[Erica Barris]

Robert was the chief economist at the US International Trade Commission, and part of his job there was to serve as kind of the archivist for this whole cocaine to blueberries saga.

[Keith Romer]

So the cocaine was coming from Colombian drug cartels, but the coca plants where cocaine comes from, they were growing all over the Andes and Bolivia, Ecuador and most of all, Peru. This was the very start of the supply chain.

[Erica Barris]

The US Government wanted farmers to stop to stop growing coca plants.

[Keith Romer]

So began what the US Called its Andean strategy. American law enforcement agents started outfitting the Peruvian military and local police with the weapons and Equipment they needed to literally root out the problem.

[Erica Barris]

Were they actually going and ripping the plants up?

[Robert Rogowski]

Oh, yeah. We gave them technology to identify where these crops were being grown. They would send troops in and then they would just go in and burn it up or destroy it. Pull it out of the ground? Yeah, it was going to the source.

[Erica Barris]

You said, oh, whatever. That's just another day.

[Robert Rogowski]

I'm not shocked at all. I'd be shocked if they didn't. It's if they saw all this cocaine growing and they said, well, that's that. Tough luck for us. Of course they're going to tear it out. These are warriors.

[Keith Romer]

But trying to make change on the ground was really hard because the Americans were not exactly in control. There were cartels, militants, corrupt leaders, and all of them were making money off of the coca plant. So you could rip it out all you want, but farmers would find their way back to growing it because it was their livelihood.

[Robert Rogowski]

We're asking you to get rid of your main foreign income operation and replace it with something else. And it's the something else that became the important carrot in this mechanism.

[Erica Barris]

The carrot wasn't going to be a carrot, also not a blueberry. But the US 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?

[Robert Rogowski]

A good war policy is destroy the enemy, but create something that incentivizes that enemy to do something else that makes them an ally.

[Erica Barris]

The US government enlisted help from some less warlike agencies like USAID and also Congress. The idea was to make Peruvian farmers our economic partners.

[Keith Romer]

Programs like these are informally called aid for trade. So instead of just sending a country aid, you send them aid that will help them trade.

[Erica Barris]

This side of fighting the war on drugs was more of a soft power approach.

[Keith Romer]

So all of this was happening in the early 1990s when free trade was opening up in all kinds of ways. Congress voted to eliminate tariffs on almost everything grown in Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, the four countries where most of the cocaine was coming from. The idea was to encourage more legitimate trade. And this is the program that Robert, as chief economist at the US International Trade Commission, was filing detailed reports about every year.

[Erica Barris]

And the US 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 US because at the time, Americans weren't feeding for Peru's native crops like quinoa, the way they are now.

[Keith Romer]

This combination of military law Enforcement, development aid and scientific research was a massive effort.

[Robert Rogowski]

And that is fairly tricky diplomacy and expensive because you're investing heavily into getting them to be able to change how their economy operates.

[Erica Barris]

When you say fairly expensive, what kind of number are we talking about in.

[Robert Rogowski]

Those days, in those dollars? I'm thinking hundreds of millions of dollars.

[Erica Barris]

Oh, okay. That's a lot of money.

[Keith Romer]

And that brings us to the next part of our journey. What to grow and where exactly to grow it.

[Erica Barris]

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.

[Keith Romer]

And changing crops could actually be dangerous. Early on, there were even attacks on USAID facilities and workers in Peru.

[Erica Barris]

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, Gustavo says, in Peru at the time, there was a huge economic crisis. 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, he says. One Sunday, he was with his wife and infant daughter. They were taking a trip to the big city. 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 for Gustavo, for the country as a whole. And the security situation was also a major impediment to the kind of economic change the US was trying to encourage.

[Keith Romer]

So in parallel, American aid workers and some farming pioneers were also trying to grow crops in an unexpected part of Peru along the country's dry, sandy coast.

[Erica Barris]

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.

[Keith Romer]

But regardless, Gustavo joined his friend. The two of them working to get a foothold on the sandy coast. And that's when they heard about these other coastal farmers who are working with Americans on seed projects south from where they were. Seed? El usaid.

[Erica Barris]

Estoira. Usaid. Usaid.

[Keith Romer]

Usaid.

[Erica Barris]

Yes. Usaid. USAID was working with the Peruvian government to figure out what export could be Peru's big one. Specifically, what should farmers grow on the sandy coast? And what they came up with was not blueberries. They decided asparagus could grow.

[Keith Romer]

Erica, how do you feel about asparagus?

[Erica Barris]

I love asparagus. Love it with lemon, love it with butter.

[Keith Romer]

I also love asparagus. Lots of Americans love asparagus, but back then, it was hard to get asparagus year round. So there was a natural market for this Peruvian asparagus that grew on an opposite schedule. Affluent Peruvians started buying up land on the coast to farm. USAID offered them asparagus seeds, and those seeds started to sow a new era for Peru.

[Erica Barris]

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.

[Keith Romer]

The combination of those changes in Peru with American investment, it worked. Word spread about this new industry where you could get a steady paycheck and not fear for your life.

[Erica Barris]

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 this hot garden bed of activity. And he says watching this was amazing. People were pulled back into the economy. People bought houses, opened bank accounts, built up credit, things that seemed impossible just years earlier. Salvo says this. This changed a lot in the country. And Gustavo was a part of it. He became an asparagus farmer, too.

[Keith Romer]

Asparagus became this massive industry, and it wasn't just fresh asparagus, but also canned asparagus. American companies like Del Monte closed asparagus operations here in the US and shifted them to Peru. All these asparagus canning factories opened up on the Peruvian coast. And after 10 years of fresh asparagus being available all year long, Americans were eating twice as much of it, which.

[Erica Barris]

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.

[Keith Romer]

This is the moment this whole project to start a healthy new economy in Peru was really put to the test. Now these Peruvian farmers had to figure out how to adapt, but without American.

[Erica Barris]

Help 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 sun 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 and the answer to the question, did all the new fruits and veggies ever replace cocaine?

[Jose Antonio Gomez Bassan]

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[Jose Antonio Gomez Bassan]

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[Erica Barris]

All those years asparagus was booming, this Peruvian businessman named Jose Antonio Gomez Bassan 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.

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

I remember my childhood going from Lima to Trujillo. You were on your car, you know, a full two, three hours of just looking at nothing. Nothing on the left, nothing on the right. It was just sand dunes.

[Keith Romer]

And then when he came back to.

[Erica Barris]

Peru, it was a green ocean, green asparagus, green fields.

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

I couldn't believe it. I was like, where's the desert? Where the desert went? It was like day and night different, totally different.

[Keith Romer]

Jose Antonio had been absent for this entire transformation in the 1990s he left Peru because the country was in turmoil. So he went abroad to work in fruit. Banana farms in Costa Rica, the fresh cut fruit industry in Belgium, the Los Angeles produce terminal. He learned just about every aspect of the business.

[Erica Barris]

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, Campo Sol.

[Keith Romer]

His assignment was to figure out what else besides asparagus his company should grow. Something that would grow in sandy soil, stay fresh on a container ship, and hit American markets in the winter. And there was one fruit that Jose Antonio really loved, one from the Northern hemisphere that was non existent in Peru when he was growing up.

[Erica Barris]

Do you remember the first blueberry you.

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

Ever had that was here in the US that was like 25 years ago.

[Erica Barris]

Okay.

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

In my breakfast, here we are, we have these oatmeals with these black things on top. So I said, why not? Let's try it.

[Erica Barris]

Did you ask anybody what it was or did you just eat it?

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

I just ate it. I looked like a fruit, you know, like a grape, but different. And I taste them and I was like, oh, this tastes even better.

[Keith Romer]

But now Jose Antonio and his Peruvian colleagues wanted to see if they could come up with a blueberry that would grow in their country. Essentially, they were doing what USAID scientists had done with asparagus, but with blueberries.

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

And the variety that really excelled in productivity and adaptability to Peruvian weather was Biloxi.

[Erica Barris]

Isn't Biloxi a city?

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

Oh, it's Biloxi, Mississippi.

[Erica Barris]

Yeah.

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

Yeah. So it's a variety that came from.

[Erica Barris]

The US you have probably had a Biloxi blueberry. It is kind of big. It's water balloon round. It's, you know, crunchy, firm, tart.

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

That was the one that adapted the best to the Peruvian climate. And Biloxi was literally the leader that conquered the Peruvian desert right after the sparrows.

[Keith Romer]

Jose Antonio and his team had found a blueberry that would thrive on Peru's coast. But they still had to figure out how to create a pipeline, how to sell and market those berries in the.

[Erica Barris]

US So Jose Antonio started cold calling blueberry brands like Driscoll's.

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

Hi, I'm from Peru. We have had a farm with blueberries. Trust me, we may be very small right now.

[Keith Romer]

But he told them, mark my words, our country is going to be the largest blueberry producer and exporter in the world.

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

Some of them, they were like maybe knock on my door when you get there.

[Keith Romer]

Yeah. The pitch did not work well. Some companies wanted an exclusive deal. Other companies insisted that they only grow certain varieties, not the Biloxi.

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

And basically I said, okay, I'm. I'm going to move back to the.

[Erica Barris]

U.S. 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.

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

We need to connect the pipeline to a major supermarket in order to move, you know, hundreds of containers of blueberries per week.

[Erica Barris]

You're talking shipping containers, right? Shipping containers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're not talking clamshells. Okay. No, no, no.

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

Ocean shipping containers with 4,000 cases of blueberries.

[Keith Romer]

Before he was calling blueberry brands. Now he was going straight to the supermarkets themselves.

[Erica Barris]

Did you have a grocery store in mind?

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

Well, the first one that came to my mind was Costco. Those guys were the king of moving volume and good quality products.

[Erica Barris]

Costco's berry buyer. Yes, that is a real job. He was very hesitant about this Biloxi blueberry.

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

He said, I'm not gonna buy Biloxi.

[Keith Romer]

No matter what, because some people do not think Biloxi blueberries taste all that good.

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

We set him up on a blind test, and guess what? He picked Biloxi as his favorite.

[Erica Barris]

You're kidding.

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

Yeah. And he said, I don't believe it. We need to repeat it. So we repeat the blind test, you know, with different varieties, and here again, pink Biloxi.

[Keith Romer]

He told Jose Antonio that it wasn't just the taste. This blueberry actually had a few other things going for it too.

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

He said, you know, Jose Antonio Biloxi may not be the best variety, but it's the most consistent variety. I like consistency. My shelf. And I will keep a, you know, a solid base of your fruit on my supermarket because it's really consistent. A consumer may forgive you of a little bit of flavor, you know, that is not the best. But a consumer will never forget a soft, mushy blueberry, ever.

[Erica Barris]

It's true.

[Keith Romer]

Jose Antonio says he didn't realize he had that consistency advantage. And he discovered he had another advantage.

[Erica Barris]

As we go to break three healthy foods that you're going to add to your grocery list. Blueberries should be one of them. As a hint, Oprah, she had been talking about blueberries on her show Blueberries. Yeah.

[Keith Romer]

Which we call brain berries.

[Erica Barris]

One of my favorites.

[Keith Romer]

I mix them with yogurt in the morning.

[Erica Barris]

I use them for snacks. I really all in my refrigerator.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Blueberries.

[Keith Romer]

Pass to the blueberries.

[Erica Barris]

Pass her the blueberries.

[Robert Rogowski]

Pass the blueberries.

[Erica Barris]

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.

[Keith Romer]

Suddenly, supermarkets had to figure out how to keep blueberries on the shelf all year long. The Costco contract turned into contracts with Walmart and Publix.

[Erica Barris]

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 US during about the same period, there's been a 91% increase in per capita consumption of blueberries.

[Keith Romer]

From what I can tell Erica, about 4% of that is in your house alone.

[Erica Barris]

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, so interesting.

[Keith Romer]

So the impact of this Aid for Trade program on Peru has been pretty striking. Americans are obviously not responsible for all of the transformations that took place, but that giant upfront investment, plus a series of free trade agreements, those were definitely fruitful. Peruvians now grow and export not just asparagus and blueberries, but also a lot of mangoes and avocados and cocoa and coffee.

[Erica Barris]

Like my entire grocery cart.

[Keith Romer]

Yes. Back in 1990, when all of this started, Peru exported about $60 million worth of fruit and vegetable products worldwide. Lately, that number is closer to $7 billion now.

[Erica Barris]

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. Our two countries are politically aligned. What about the war on drugs? What about that part of the program? Was that successful in many.

[Robert Rogowski]

I don't mean to be Coyote, but the answer to that is always yes and no.

[Erica Barris]

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.

[Robert Rogowski]

So it was successful in taking a geographic area that had been taken over by drug cartels and converting it into an area that is now a much more productive supplier of things we should, should be eating instead of things we should not be consuming. So that was successful.

[Keith Romer]

And right up until the beginning of this year, when President Trump cut almost all of USAID's budget, the US was still sending millions of dollars to Peru annually for aid programs like crop substitution. And there has been some success getting farmers up in the Peruvian mountains to switch from coca to crops like coffee and cocoa.

[Erica Barris]

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.

[Keith Romer]

So now Peru is successfully exporting a whole lot of blueberries and still a whole lot of coca, because now it.

[Robert Rogowski]

Can grow both products and, and generate wealth this way. So in terms of just pure wealth generation, it's a plus for Peru and.

[Erica Barris]

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 shotgun. 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. We've linked to it in the show notes. Also, if you have any trade or tariff questions, let us know. We'[e-mail] and 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. You get sponsor free listening and bonus episodes and it really means a lot to us. It is super helpful. You can learn more or sign [e-mail] and thank you to everyone who has already signed up.

[Keith Romer]

This episode of Planet Money was produced by Sylvie Douglas with help from from Willow Rubin, was edited by Marianne McCune and engineered by Jimmy Keeley. It was fact checked by Cierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

[Erica Barris]

Thank you to Robert Koopman, Paul Gutenberg, Lawrence Ruby, Javier Morales, Everett Eisenstadt and Todd Egan.

[Keith Romer]

I'm Keith Romer.

[Erica Barris]

And I'm Erica Barris. This is npr. Thanks for listening.

[Gustavo Guerrero Pareto]

Foreign.

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