SANTA LUCIA, Peru, March 23 (UPI) -- The cocaine industry is booming in Peru, with an estimated 127,000 acres of coca bushes planted in the Andean nation, officials say.

According to the Peruvian government and estimates by the United Nations, plots of coca bushes have increased by about one-third since 1999, though cocaine production in Peru is still well below the record levels of the early 1990s, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.

Peru is the No. 2 global supplier of cocaine, the Times said. Officials say Peru's drug trade is no longer controlled by kingpins, but instead by a network of smaller-scale producers.

"We're up against an army of ants," Gen. Miguel Hidalgo, who heads Peru's national anti-drug police, was quoted as saying.

The newspaper reported that in the last two years, 73 coca plant eradication workers have been wounded and two killed, and more than two dozen police officers have died in drug-related violence.

Encouraging the nation's drug production are smuggling rings from Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Nigeria and the Dominican Republic, Peruvian officials said.