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Glyphosate has never killed all coca

In January of 2001 I visited La Hormiga in Putumayo just after the town had been fumigated.

Amid dead corn and plantains, I saw a single surviving plant -- a coca bush that had been severely damaged but was still alive.  A community activist I was travelling with explained that coca plants often survive fumigation, and that though a single crop is lost, the plants can sometimes be stripped of their leaves and go on to produce another harvest.

Coca is a hardy plant, much more resistant than food crops or other native plants.  This is not to say that the fumigations don't destroy a lot of coca, depriving families of their livelihoods -- but rather that coca plants that survive fumigation aren't evidence of any new super strain.

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