Afghanistan’s opium poppy cultivation this year is up by a third, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said on November 1, in its first report on the issue since the hardline Taliban took power in 2021, reports Hasht-e-Subh. The UNODC said cultivation in Afghanistan rose by 32 per cent to 233,000 hectares (580,000 acres) over the previous year, making the 2022 crop the third largest area cultivated since monitoring began in 1994. The income made by farmers from opium sales more than tripled from USD425 million in 2021 to USD1.4 billion in 2022, the report said.