High opium prices threaten drug control efforts of recent years

Rising opium prices may encourage farmers in Afghanistan to plant more opium poppy, warns UNODC in its Afghanistan Opium Survey 2010, released this week. The high prices are based on speculation that there will be shortages because an opium blight halved production in 2010 and because of ongoing military operations, which are creating uncertainty among opium poppy farmers regarding future cultivation.

There is cause for concern. The market responded to the steep drop in opium production with an equally dramatic jump in the market price to more than double 2009 levels, said Yury Fedotov, Executive Director of UNODC.

According to UNODC poppy-growing households have seen a cash windfall. In 2010, the average farm-gate price of dry opium at harvest time was $169 per kilogram, an increase of 164 per cent compared to 2009, when the price was $64 per kilogram. Despite the drop in production, the gross income per hectare of opium poppy cultivated increased by 36 per cent to $4,900. The average annual income of opium poppy-growing households in 2009 was 17 per cent higher than for households that had stopped cultivating opium poppy.