Afghanistan: Herat’s Opium Fields Make Way for Saffron

Jul 4, 2019 | Stefanie Glinski, National
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In the past five years, Ali Bahib has helped dozens of Afghan poppy farmers make the switch to saffron. The agricultural engineer and manager of Gharzai Saffron, a company with its production base in Herat, in western Afghanistan, has worked in the business for the past 15 years, but says it is now booming like never before. Both crops are labour intensive, but in a country with hot and dry summers like in Afghanistan, saffron has a clear advantage: it requires little irrigation compared to the water-sucking poppy plants.