Opium is Afghanistan’s most important agricultural crop by value and provides much-needed livelihoods for many people in rural areas. The illicit production of opium still overshadows licit agriculture, accounting for nearly half of overall agricultural production on a much smaller portion of arable land. Opium revenue, boosted by prohibitionist measures in most of the client markets, counters the incentives to develop a sustainable formal agriculture sector. In addition, the large criminal profits of the drug industry undermine governance, fuels corruption, nurtures deeply dysfunctional and highly extractive politics and, ultimately, stimulates insecurity and conflict. Moving away from economic reliance on opium is thus a priority development objective. But given opium’s characteristic as both a high-value, storable commodity with a ready market and a secure cash crop for an insecure environment, putting this into practice will not be easy.

Nonetheless, sustainable progress made in eliminating opium cultivation in some areas, suggests that phasing out opium production in Afghanistan over the next 10–20 years is achievable. Estimates for the area size planted with opium poppy have fallen sharply in recent years, from 193,000 ha in 2007 to 131,000 ha in 2011. This decline has largely been driven by the saturation of markets and lowered prices, even though trends are rather volatile. However, opium production grew again in 2011 after a plant disease wiped out nearly half of the harvest in 2010 to reach an estimated level of 154,000 ha in 2012. Given the insecurity level, poppy production remains unfortunately a safe investment.

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