The newspaper República of Colombia published in September, 2006 a hopeful article for the Magdalena Medio, the region of the center-North of Colombia, very rich in petroleum, but among which 70 % of the population (that is 560 000 inhabitants) live below the poverty line.

Irely Guzmán tells one of the last initiatives of the CDPMM (Committee of Development and Peace of the Magdalena Medio), committee created in the 90s which aims at restoring the peace by taking out the population of this region of the poverty and the violence through voluntary local initiatives.

The idea of the CDPMM is to incite the farmers who produce at present of the coca extract to stop their illicit culture and to produce of stevia. The market of stevia is very carrier indeed in South America and actually, very profitable to the small producers.

An experimental initiative was thus organized on 2 hectares of ground, employing 20 persons, with a 70000-euro budget. The purpose is to understand the functioning of the plant and to learn from it to be able to spread this culture to the whole region.

The following stage will be to distribute plantations of stevia to every voluntary family so that the culture of stevia enters the customs and so that it brings them a complement of income thanks to cooperatives which buy the production of the small producers to resell it to national or international customers.

Finally, it is planned that the culture extends then in the regions of San Pablo and Santa Rosa, always with the same objective, the eradication of the production of coca.

The initiative is certainly ambitious and risked as drug is a very juicy market but such an initiative could indeed change drastically the situation at a regional level, by restoring a peace climate, and at the international level, by stopping the production of drug to the source.