Also at a more than 20-year high was potential cocaine output, which rose 24% to 1,738 metric tonnes. Coca is the chief ingredient in cocaine, whose production has fueled the Andean country's six-decade armed conflict, which has killed at least 450,000 people. Petro's government wants to help rural communities voluntarily substitute some 100,000 hectares of coca crops over the next four years, an official told Reuters recently. The government wants to reduce cultivation areas to 150,000 hectares and production capacity to 900 metric tonnes by 2026, Osuna said. Some 13% of Colombia's annual deforestation is linked to illicit crops, Environment Minister Susana Muhamad told a drugs conference last week.

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Persons: Candice Welsch, Welsch, Gustavo Petro, Colombia's, Nestor Osuna, Osuna, Susana Muhamad, oversupply, Luis Jaime Acosta, Oliver Griffin, Julia Symmes Cobb, Richard Chang Organizations: United Nations Office, Drugs, Reuters, UN, Food Locations: BOGOTA, Colombia, Putumayo province, Ecuador