June is the harvest time for opium poppy in the Northern Hemisphere, and Afghanistan’s third harvest remains low since the April 2022 Taliban ban on its cultivation.
There are no overall official UN or other estimates yet on the volume of opium, or the area of poppy cultivated, but reliable indications are that these remain low compared to the recent years’ of production under the U.S. and NATO occupation. As of the 2021 June harvest, under occupation, an estimated 233,000 hectares of land were under poppy cultivation, in 23 out of 34 provinces. This number fell drastically down to an estimated 10,800 hectares in 15 provinces in the June 2023 harvest. It came up somewhat the next year, to be 12,800 HA in 14 provinces. This summer’s figures are awaited, but will be low compared to 2021.
