In Afghanistan, opium poppy cultivation has increased sharply since the Taliban took power last year. This year, the plant was grown on 233,000 hectares, an increase of 32 percent compared to last year.
The poppy harvest in 2022 is therefore among the third largest in almost thirty years in terms of area, according to a report published Tuesday by the United Nations Agency for Drugs and Crime, UNODC.
The Taliban banned drug production in April. Poppy was also no longer allowed to be grown, but this year’s harvest was largely left undisturbed, according to the UNODC. The ban also caused the price of poppy to rise sharply. The 2022 harvest is one of the most profitable in years, according to the UN agency. Last year farmers earned 425 million dollars (429 million euros) from opium poppy, this year it was no less than 1.4 billion dollars. The UNODC expects that many farmers will therefore pay little attention to the ban and will plant plenty of poppies this month to harvest next year.
Afghanistan is the largest poppy producer in the world. It is estimated that more land is used in Afghanistan for growing opium poppy than in all of Latin America for growing coca plants. A few years ago, more people worked in poppy cultivation in Afghanistan than in the security forces. The UNODC has been monitoring poppy cultivation in Afghanistan since 1994. Only in 2018 and 2019 was more poppy grown than this year.
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