David García knew he was through with the opium poppy business when he saw the helicopter taking aerial shots of his village near here.

The 2008 incident wasn’t the first time the government came to destroy his plants, but this time things were different. Coffee prices were surging, and many opium poppy growers in this southern state of Guerrero, who make the raw material used for heroin, had already begun switching to the legal crop.

In 1992, international coffee prices hit a multiyear low of less than 42 cents a pound. Today, coffee futures are at more than six times that level, almost $2.95 a pound.

Like Mr. García, other poppy farmers are now reviving coffee plantations they neglected when prices were historically low, sawing off old branches and planting new trees…”The advantages to growing coffee are huge,” said one poppy producer in the state who is in the process of turning to coffee. “We can actually take pride in our work. We won’t have to hide.”

The Wall Street Journal – Illegal Crop Is Swapped For Legal One In Mexico

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