Afghans Ditch Opium for Spice

This is a retelling, in our own words, of the story CNN reported in June 2012.

Across Afghanistan, the war on opium poppies was being lost. A 2011 UN Office on Drugs and Crime survey found poppy cultivation up 7% on the prior year, with rising opium prices making the crop — long a major Taliban funding source — ever more attractive to farmers. But one province was showing real progress with a surprising weapon: the world's most expensive spice, saffron.

Farmers in Herat, in western Afghanistan, said saffron fetched more profit than poppy — and they had found an enticing way to sell it: in beautiful little tins and perfume-bottle packaging aimed at export markets.

"Herat province has been cleaned of 99% of its poppy cultivation," Basheer Ahmad Ahmadi, head of agriculture for the province, told CNN. "The government, cooperation of NGOs, some donations and USAID has played an important role to help and encourage saffron cultivation."

For farmers like Hajji Ibrahim Aadil, switching was not a simple decision. After changing from poppy to saffron, he drew unwanted attention: "Taliban took money from me. I walked for days with my eyes wrapped with a piece of cloth. I was kept in a well for two days. Finally, they told me to stop promoting the cultivation of saffron."

Aadil and his 13 family members moved, and now grow and sell saffron freely — more profitably than poppy ever was, enough for a large home in a peaceful area where his young daughters attend school. "I always wanted my girls to be educated," he said.

Saffron also opened doors for Afghan women. Pari Gul Danish Yaar sits at a table with a large pile of the spice, using tweezers to pick out unwanted strands by hand. Working with poppy had been forbidden in her household; the saffron trade gave her a legal, respectable job. "I am very happy with this work because it is very useful for Afghanistan and other countries."

Dozens of companies had formed to export Afghan saffron. But success had pitfalls: farmers said export bottlenecks, the lack of a standards and marketing body, weak processing and packaging infrastructure, and quality-control problems were holding the industry back. Ahmadi said three saffron laboratories in Herat could test for color, smell, and taste — a start on certification.

Still, farmers like Aadil were eyeing world markets, where the deep red spice fetches thousands of dollars per pound — and where, unlike opium, it aligned with Islam and opened work to women.

Based on reporting by CNN (June 14, 2012). The original CNN Business 360 blog post is no longer online; the same Herat saffron story was covered contemporaneously by the Christian Science Monitor (ReliefWeb, June 10, 2010) and IRIN (ReliefWeb, August 6, 2008).