Opium poppy cultivation is most prevalent throughout Afghanistan’s northern provinces. In 2001, Badakhshan province was the country’s top opium poppy producer. Land dedicated to poppy cultivation in Badakhshan has doubled since 2000, making the province likely to hold on to its top producer position for 2002 as well. Farmers without irrigated fields take advantage of the good climate conditions and plant in rain-fed fields in Badakhsan.

Opium production strikes rock bottom in Afghanistan’s northwestern province of Badghis with just 26 hectares of land dedicated to cultivation of opium poppies. But prices in Badghis are relatively high — about $605 per kilogram as of February 2002. These relatively robust prices resulted from the province’s proximity to three opium market areas on the Turkmenistan border where demand is high. Even so, the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) has found that the government’s January 2002 ban on poppy cultivation has made farmers in the northwest less likely to grow the plant.

Helmand province was Afghanistan’s top producer in 2000. The ban on poppy cultivation introduced by President Hamid Karzai’s government in January 2002 had little effect on this province where Kajaki district farmers were re-ploughing wheat fields in February to replant with the more financially lucrative opium poppy.

Nangarhar province was Afghanistan’s second largest cultivator of opium poppy in 2000. In some areas of Nangarhar where fields are irrigated by a canal near Jalalabad, opium poppy fields account for 20 percent of all cultivated land.