The numbers were crazy. Cannabis farmers in Afghanistan were pulling in 145 kgs of resin from just one hectare of land. To put that in perspective, in Morocco, the yield was less than a third of that. Just 40 kgs per hectare.
And this wasn’t just happening in some hidden corner. Cannabis Plant was being grown in 22 out of the country’s 34 provinces. From huge, commercial fields down to small family garden plots. It was everywhere.
But here’s the really fascinating part, where it was growing completely shifted. Before 2006, most of it was in the west. But by 2010, more than half of all the cultivation had moved south.
Farmers who were already growing opium poppies in the south found a perfect complementary crop in cannabis Plant.
The southern shift placed the cultivation closer to key smuggling routes into Pakistan and Iran which was a win-win situation for the cannabis farmers.
References
Document title or description: UNODC. 2009. Cannabis cultivation in Afghanistan. PDF (https://share.google/f5rkPf4vThmcqCEF4)