Southern Shan State, Myanmar – Tian Win Nang squats on the hard-packed earth, balancing a kilogramme (2.2 pounds) of ...

Baum and King are Times staff writers. JALALABAD, AFGHANISTAN, AND THE UNITED NATIONS — After seven years of extraordinary expansion, Afghanistan’s harvest of poppies used to produce opium has ...

After all, the surrounding fields of Helmand Province produce a remarkable 40% of the world's illicit opium supply, and much of this harvest has been traded in Marja. Rushing through those opium ...

By 2007, according to United Nations estimates, Afghanistan’s opium harvest hit an all-time high. When Obama took the reins in 2009, his special envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke — a ...

Afghanistan's opium poppy cultivation set a new record this year, according to an annual survey released by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. Total cultivation rose 7 percent, compared with last ...

Still, the U.N. and the Afghan government predict that this year’s opium harvest will be at least 30% smaller than last year’s 4,200 tons, partly because of a more aggressive eradication effort.

The biggest harvest, of 4,565 tons, was recorded in 1999. The area devoted to opium poppy cultivation was the third largest since 1994, and is comparable to the area used before 2001, when a ...

This year, many Afghan poppy farmers are expecting a windfall as they get ready to harvest opium from a new variety of poppy seeds said to boost yield of the resin that produces heroin.

The name was familiar: the local police chief. Those poppies were part of what the United Nations now calls the largest opium harvest in Afghanistan's history. Afghanistan produces an estimated 75 ...

"Farmers’ income from selling the 2023 opium harvest to traders fell by more than 92 per cent from an estimated US$1,360 million for the 2022 harvest to US$110 million in 2023," it said.