Colombia’s coca production has soared in the past year, and more is flowing to Australian shores. But how did it come to this? Cesar Alvarez explains.

Imagine an area larger than the Australian Capital Territory, nearly twice the size of London and four times that of New York City covered in coca plantations.

That’s the scale of Colombia’s coca cultivation, according to an estimate from the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Colombia produces an estimated 2,664 metric tonnes of cocaine annually. That is enough to fill 20 Boeing 747 cargo planes per year.

Not even during the darkest days of Pablo Escobar’s infamous empire did Colombia cultivate as much coca or produce as much cocaine as it does today.

In the past year alone, coca crops expanded by 10 per cent and production capacity soared more than 50 per cent.

So how did it come to this?

Colombia did not arrive at this point overnight, nor by chance. A complex mix of radical and failed policy shifts, scientific innovation and global demand, among other factors, has shaped this trajectory.

For example, in 2015, Colombia’s Constitutional Court suspended aerial fumigation and

© InDaily