Opium production in Afghanistan set to rise

Opium production in Afghanistan is set to rise by nearly two-thirds this year, with farmers’ revenues set to soar compared to last year’s harvest blighted by disease, the United Nations said Tuesday. Ten years after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion to drive the Taliban from power, Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the world’s illegal opium, funding much of the militia’s insurgency despite an expensive Western eradication program. The U.N. said that cultivation of the poppy crop reached 131,000 hectares in 2011, seven percent higher than in 2010 "due to insecurity and high prices", said the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in its annual opium survey. And with the crop yield per hectare up markedly from last year, overall production would potentially rise by 61 percent on last year, the report said. The consistency of the area under opium production indicates a major failure on the part of NATO’s civilian partners ? notably provincial reconstruction teams ? to convince farmers to switch to alternative crops. The price of dry opium rose 43 percent this year compared to 2010 and total farm-gate income is set to increase by 133 percent to reach $1.4 billion in 2011, or nine percent of Afghanistan’s GDP, the report said.