He also said many coca growers had food crops mixed in among the coca bushes.
First there is the coca bush, this is what cocaine is made from.
Fields of brown, withering coca bushes, whose leaves are used to make cocaine, remain in their wake.
But replacing coca bushes with citrus trees means waiting a few years until the trees bear marketable fruit.
But we can test their herbicides on coca bushes, something they can't do.
"It is foolish to expect any government to win this war if its only mission is to rip up coca bushes."
An aerial spray would be a major advance; tearing up coca bushes by the roots is labor intensive and invites violent confrontation with farmers.
With two armed helicopters hovering overhead, the security forces slashed 10 acres of coca bushes with machetes.
Long trees lay every which way on their sides, and amid them, beside them, grew the new coca bushes.
They shall destroy the coca bushes if illegally cultivated.