The Independent
The harvest began last week and it is brutally labour intensive and skilled work. Every one of thousands of poppy heads must be lightly scored with a four- bladed razor and then the opium "milk" that oozes forth scraped off and collected.
Depending on the quality of the crop, the operation must be repeated between three and seven times. Behind him in the field, his sons Gul Ahmed, 10 and Juma Jan, seven, were hard at work. Small boys have the advantage of working at the same height as the poppy heads.
Though he is only a paid labourer and does not own the land he is working, Haji Shadi expects to make about $1,800 (£1,000). That represents one-third of the value of the crop on a plot that is four-fifths of a hectare.
In April, a UN rapid assessment that sought only to estimate broad trends in poppy cultivation offered an alarming picture of likely production when it suggested cultivation was down in only three of Afghanistan's 36 provinces and was increasing or strongly increasing in 13.
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