Myanmar’s opium farmers cling on to lucrative crop

Fields of purple opium poppy stretch across the pastures and peaks of mountainous eastern Myanmar, with many farmers reluctant to give up the profitable cash crop in spite of incentives offered. Myanmar is the second biggest source of opium in the world after Afghanistan, with Shan state its main production hub. AFP hiked up the steep mountainside towering over the small town of Hopong, just a few dozen kilometres from tourist hotspot Inle Lake.

The farmland closest to the town boasts fields of coffee, potatoes and corn, and provides a lifeline for the scattered villages. But scale the ridge and the far side exposes a blanket of purple reaching up to an altitude of some 2,400 metres (8,000 feet). Each day men and women from the surrounding villages, home to the Pa-O and other Shan ethnic minority groups, take to the fields of the illegal flower.

They harvest its addictive sap into cans that can fetch up to $100 each, sums that far exceed the profits possible from other produce. For many farmers -- among Myanmar’s poorest people -- their crop choice simply comes down to money. After trying to cultivate coffee, one farmworker, preferring not to be named, said he switched back to growing opium three years ago.

“We know that it’s not good for our country,” he said, looking up from the opium poppy in his hand to survey the purple-shrouded mountainsides around him. “But we have no choice because it’s very difficult to make a living from other crops.”