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From Our Own Correspondent: Peru and the USA

Peru and the USA

02/12/2013

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Peru and the USA

Why coca still grows in Amazonian fields; how a storm ravaged South Dakota's livestock

Why coca still grows in Amazonian fields. Plus, the South Dakota ranchers whose livestock was ravaged by a once-in-a-century storm.

In Peru, Robin Lustig treks through Amazonian fields to find coca still growing there, despite governmental efforts to make farmers cultivate cacao or coffee instead. But with profits so high and the competition so keen, are local peasants really likely to give up coca leaf? 

Far to the north, under the huge open skies of South Dakota, Sybil Ruscoe meets the ranch communities recently devastated by a once-in-a-century storm which killed tens of thousands of cattle. People here are hard-working, God-fearing - and not waiting for a US government bailout, but rallying to help each other by donating livestock to those who have lost their herds.

(Photo: A farmer walking through a coca field in Peru. Credit: Jaime Razuri/AFP/Getty Images)

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