Opium production in Afghanistan may fall in 2010, UN reports

Productivity could stay stable or fall, continuing a trend since 2007 which has seen a one-third drop in production, according to a new UNODC study. The report is based on farmers' intentions at the start of the planting season and gives an early picture of the 2010 crop. The cultivation of opium – raw material for the world's deadliest drug, heroin – in Afghanistan could drop this year, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said today, as bad weather is forecast during the country's current growing season.

It also found a correlation between insurgency and high cultivation, with nearly 80 per cent of villages with very poor security conditions growing poppies but in only 7 per cent of villages untouched by violence. The UNODC report pointed out that in parts of Afghanistan where the Government is more able to enforce the law, nearly two thirds of farmers said they did not grow opium because it is banned, whereas in the southeast, where authorities' reach is weaker, just under 40 per cent of farmers cited the ban as a reason for not cultivating poppies.