Poppy is Not the Most Profitable Crop, It’s the Only Crop

Poppy is Not the Most Profitable Crop, It’s the Only Crop

by Allison Brown, Small Wars Journal

Poppy is Not the Most Profitable Crop, It’s the Only Crop (Full PDF Article)

If poppy were really the most profitable crop in Afghanistan, farmers would be growing it year-round. They’re not, nor are they growing all that much of it outside 4 provinces in the south. How can this be if poppy is such an economic slam dunk?

It is no lie that poppy has advantages. Poppy fits a special niche in the agriculture calendar, the winter season when very few valuable crops can grow. The harvested opium gum is imperishable and easily transportable and it increases in value with age, serving as a home-grown, interest bearing bank account. And the opium can be used as a pain killer where there are no doctors. The disadvantages of poppy — that it is illegal, haram (forbidden), and a management nightmare — are overshadowed by farmers’ need to survive. But the notion that opium is the most profitable crop is a myth.

Poppy is the most profitable crop when there is little else to sell. That is, growing poppy is the most profitable option for farmers who are too far from a marketplace, farmers who have no access to modern technologies and reliable farm supplies, and farmers who live where gangsters rule — a gun at your head is a compelling inducement to do most anything.

Poppy in southern Afghanistan is a winter-season monoculture and farmers are mere contract growers. The gangsters provide a full agriculture extension package — seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, labor management and immediate payment for the product at the farmgate. The rest of the year the Afghan government, with the help of international aid programs, struggles to promote other crops.

Poppy is Not the Most Profitable Crop, It’s the Only Crop (Full PDF Article)