Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has increased by 330 per cent this year, according to the latest UNODC survey, with production up by 400 per cent.
Cultivation has increased to more than 43,000 hectares compared to 10,000 hectares in 2025, with estimated production increasing from 300 tons to almost 1,500. The levels remain far below those seen before the Taliban introduced its opium ban in 2022, but represent the ‘first significant increase’ since the ban was enforced, says UNODC. Although eradication efforts are continuing, many farmers now appear to be concealing poppy plots in cereal fields or walled compounds, or are staggering their planting and harvesting to avoid detection, the report states.
While opium prices have fallen slightly as a result of the increase – from US$570 per kg to US$500 – they remain far above the pre-ban levels of less than $100 per kg. Regional opiate trafficking had remained resilient in the years following the ban, but recent data indicates that the quantities of previously stockpiled opium are now finally depleting. Opium prices in Afghanistan ‘increased sharply following the ban, allowing traffickers to release stocks gradually while making large profits’, the report states. ‘If these stocks are now largely exhausted, there may be a strong incentive to resume poppy cultivation. For farmers, many of whom were unable to accumulate large stocks and continue to face severe economic hardship, opium cultivation may remain one of the few available sources of income, providing reason to grow despite the enforcement risks.’
Earlier this year the agency warned that the global opioid market had reached a ‘turning point’, with traffickers increasingly shifting to powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyls, nitazenes and orphines in the wake of the ban. Nitazenes were implicated in almost 250 of the drug-related deaths recorded by National Records of Scotland last year, while new psychoactive substances are still being reported in Europe at the rate of one a week, says EUDA – among them ‘potent new synthetic opioids’.
Continued monitoring of cultivation, production, prices and trafficking will be necessary to determine whether this year’s increases are ‘temporary or the start of a resurgence in opium and heroin production,’ says UNODC. ‘The fourfold increase in opium poppy cultivation shows the difficulty in sustaining decreases in illicit opium cultivation when poor farmers have no alternatives to feed their families,’ said executive director Monica Juma, with the international community needing to work together to ‘support farming communities by investing in livelihoods, farming infrastructure and access to markets’.
Afghanistan opium survey 2026: cultivation, production and market analysis available here