FEATURE-Marijuana loses ground to silkworms in the Philippines | Reuters

KAPANGAN, Philippines, April 22 (Reuters) - Hundreds of white mulberry trees have started to cover mountain slopes deep in the northern Philippines’ Cordillera region, changing not just the landscape but also making over the image of a poor farming town.

Up until a few years ago, the upland villages of Kapangan, a town of 18,000 people in Benguet province, were known as one of the country’s largest cultivation areas for marijuana.

“We’ve started something to erase that tag,” Roberto Canuto, Kapangan’s mayor told Reuters. “We’re determined to be known as something else, perhaps the silk capital of the country.”

Many farmers became interested in the silk industry after trials produced about 25 kilos of raw silk that sold for $50 per kilogram early this year.

“This could be the perfect alternative to marijuana … This could give us extra cash without taking any risks,” said Wilbur Teofilo, a leader of a farmers’ cooperative in Kapangan that is upgrading 11 “rearing houses” and building nine more to raise raw silk production to 250 kilos every two months this year.

Most farmers will not admit to having cultivated marijuana before getting into sericulture. But growing the illegal plant was cheap and profitable and relatively easy work.

Dionisio Santiago, head of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, said it was studying how Thailand had wiped out its poppy fields by offering farmers viable alternatives.

Anti-narcotics agencies have pledged to invest more in the sericulture project if silk-making succeeds in cutting marijuana supply.

Teofilo said farmers in his village were willing to give the silkworm project a try because raw silk production could also be a profitable business.

“What’s important for us was to find new ways to improve our finances through honest means,” he said.

I’ve got nothing against silk, but there are few places where it is possible to engage in sericulture.  Governments that are truly concerned about drug farming — whether it is marijuana in the Philippines, coca in Colombia, or poppies in Afghanistan — keep looking for alternative crops for these poor subsistence farmers to grow and sell to survive.  Prohibition makes these drug crops far more lucrative than food crops, at a time when most of the world is facing a food crisis.  We can at least begin by legalizing marijuana and hemp, and let the farming of cannabis also be a way to “improve our finances through honest means.”