Afghanistan produces 90% of the world's opium, the main ingredient in heroin Monday 31 January 2011
Afghan opium farming 'to spread'
Afghanistan produces 90% of the world's opium, the main ingredient in heroin The growing of opium poppies in the Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar is predicted to be down for the second year running.
But a UN drugs forecast released on Monday says that poppy growing will increase elsewhere in Afghanistan.
Forecasting the Afghan crop is a tricky business, and the groundwork for this UN survey is based on the sample of only a few villages in each province.
But matched with satellite imaging, it suggests poppy growing will spread.
And that spread this year will even extend into provinces that had become poppy-free in recent years.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has expressed concern in particular about a predicted increase in Nangahar, a large province bordering Pakistan where poppy growing had been all but eradicated in recent years.
It is a strange market that does not conform to usual market forces.
Although the price to farmers more than doubled last year to $164 a kilogram - because of a cut in output caused by crop disease - the price paid by buyers abroad did not go up.
Jean Luc Lemahieu UNODC head in Kabul“When you see more conflict, when you see more poverty, you will see more opium cultivation”
So Afghanistan's drug barons were squeezed in the middle.
The higher prices paid to farmers played a big part in encouraging more to plant this year.
The UN survey predicts more planting across a wide swathe of central Afghanistan - from Herat and Ghor in the west to the provinces east of Kabul along the Pakistan border.
Their forecast for the northern region will come out later in the year, as the season starts later in the north.
The predicted rise in poppy planting tallies with other evidence suggesting that the Taliban insurgency has spread across a wider region of the country.
The UNODC's head in Kabul, Jean Luc Lemahieu, said tough measures were needed so that the forecast did not become a reality.
"When you see more conflict, when you see more poverty, you will see more opium cultivation. That is why we continue saying this is not business as usual. We need to put extraordinary measures in place today," he said.
The silver lining in the forecast is that for the third year running, Helmand's crop is forecast to reduce this year - and for the second year, Kandahar too will grow fewer poppies.
These two provinces are by far the largest poppy-growing regions in Afg
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