Opium Supply Control Policies in Afghanistan: A Case Study OF Daykundi Province, Kiti District

Abstract The opium poppy cultivation is one of the many problems that Afghanistan is facing nowadays. To address this problem, many strategies such as eradication, interdiction and alternative livelihood opportunities have been adopted. But, it is a well-established fact that these efforts have not been successfully proved as they were envisaged when started. It is believed that cultivation of opium poppy will automatically contract by enhancing licit livelihood opportunities. But, alternative livelihood development has failed to recognize the different motivations and factors that influence household's decision to cultivate illicit drug crops and ignored the fact that these motivation and factor differ across households from different socio-economic group in different areas of Afghanistan. The goal of this study was to examine opium cultivation alternative policies using positive mathematical programming (PMP) model at representative farm (RF) level. PMP has been improved to overcome normative character of optimization models. Therefore, PMP is highly practical for analyzing the consequences of agricultural policies as long as enough empirical data are available for calibration of the model. A linear programming model was used for the RF of homogenous groups when no empirical data was available. Farm level data were obtained from a sample of poppy farmers in the Kiti district of Daykundi province. A two stage cluster sampling was used to select the sample farmers. At the first stage, a cluster of seven villages. In the second stage, by a simple random sampling method, 132 poppy producers were chosen for interview and collection of necessary farm level data. The results showed that opium is the only cash crop in contrast with other crops which are cultivated primarily to meet subsistence requirements. The exclusion of opium had significant effects on farmers' income and decreased their gross margins by 34.7 to 68 percents. Results also indicated that saffron is a serious alternative for opium poppy particularly at the representative farm of group 2 under current conditions. But, the retail margin for the poppy is very high and if a part of this margin assign to poppy farmers, none of the crop can compete against opium poppy. In other words, saffron cannot be an alternative crop if the farm gate price of poppy becomes eighty thousand Afghanis per Man (Approximately 1Man=5 kilos). Finally, it was found that price and non-price policies of wheat and corn can alleviate economic effects of poppy interdiction