VIENNA (Reuters) -The total area of land in Afghanistan on which opium poppy is grown shrank 20% this year, according to a U.N. estimate issued on Thursday, a further drop since farming of the raw material for heroin collapsed in 2023 after the Taliban banned it.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said its annual survey of opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, long the world’s dominant producer, had found the harvest had shrunk even faster, falling an estimated 32% to 296 tons.
The 20% reduction in the area under cultivation follows a 19% rebound in 2024. Those fluctuations are a mere fraction of the massive drop in 2023 that followed the Taliban’s announcement in 2022 that it was outlawing narcotics production.
Opium Farming in Afghanistan Shrank by a Fifth in 2025, UN Survey Finds
