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HERAT, Afghanistan The hot summer wind sent dust whirling into the air as Nasir Ahmad deftly picked a handful of brown saffron crocus bulbs from a freshly dug hole in the parched earth.

With his fingers, weathered by decades of farming in western Afghanistans deserts, he plucked the lingering dirt clods from the bulbs. It would still be months before they yielded their valuable flowers, but Ahmad cradled them gently.

A towering figure in a bright yellow turban and long, graying beard, Ahmad gazes across the few acres that will determine his future.

These are now my life, he said, fingering the bulbs. Afghanistan is a nation of farmers, and we need to succeed.

For years, Ahmad, 45, grew opium poppies, which are used to produce heroin. As it does for many other Afghans, the illicit drug trade provided him with a stable income in a country beset by economic hardships, especially in the more rural areas.

Under the Taliban, opium-poppy cultivation had been banned and the crop virtually eliminated, but cultivation has rebounded since the U.S. invasion in 2001, partly because of the collapse of state control and law enforcement.

At the very time when many other farmers were going back to growing opium poppies, Ahmad made a contrarian business decision: He switched to growing saffron, the worlds most expensive spice. Made from the crimson stigmas plucked and dried from a type of crocus flower, saffron can sell for more than $1,200 a pound, compared with less than $2 per pound for a spice such as cumin.

Afghanistan produced 4.5 tons of saffron last year, most of which was exported abroad, according to Sayed Nabi Shinwari, who heads the vocational training program at Afghanistans Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock. The number of people in Afghanistan involved in growing and processing the spice is not known, but the ministry says it has distributed seeds to nearly 500 farmers and has trained 2,000.

Afghan officials contend that many poppy farmers in Herat have switched to growing saffron, and international officials often hold saffron up as an example of ways Afghan farmers can successfully grow more legal and less harmful crops.

But the United Nations says overall poppy production in Afghanistan remains near all-time highs. As the international military coalition prepares to pull out its combat troops at the end of the year, many question whether Afghanistan has any chance of shedding its status as the top opium producer in the world. The U.S. has invested upward of $7 billion in poppy eradication and crop substitution programs.

Continued here:
Could saffron help Afghanistan kick its poppy habit?