UN: Poor Myanmar farmers may turn to growing opium

In  1999,  the  country  set  out  to become opium-free by 2014 and the campaign made considerable strides, with  the  amount  of  land  cultivated for opium plummeting from 322,000 acres  (130,300  hectares)  in  1998  to 53,000  acres  (21,500  hectares)  in 2006.

A  United  Nations  report  released  Monday  however  said  that the amount of  land being cultivated climbed  to  70,400  acres  (28,500 hectares) last year, mainly due to rising prices.

"Rising opium prices may make it more attractive for farmers  to revert back to opium cultivation, especially if  no  alternative  sources  of  income are available," Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, said in  the  report, which called  for more international assistance.

The  strong  increase  in  the  price of  Myanmar's  opium  was  due  to reduced  production  and  continued demand  from  China, Australia  and other countries in the region, it said.

Weak  prices  for  legal  agricultural commodities make the situation more difficult, as does the soft global economy,  said  an  experts  at  a news conference to release the report.

"We would expect that with the global financial meltdown many people will be unemployed,” said Gary Lewis, also from the U.N.  agency. Most will  try  to earn  their  living  legally,  "but  when  those  options  are exhausted  they will  turn quite naturally to other means to survive. Some of those will involve trafficking in illicit and narcotic products.

“ Myanmar in 2008 is estimated to have produced 410 tons of opium, involving the work of 840,000 people and $123 million in revenue for those farming the poppy plant, it said.

Prices being fetched for Myanmar's  opium  contrast  sharply  with falling prices for the crop in Afghanistan, where most of  the world's opium  comes  from  and  where  several years of overproduction has  created a glut.

The  average  price  paid  to  farmers  in Myanmar for  the 2008 opium harvest  was  $137  per  pound  ($301 per kilogram), up from the 2007 average  of  $120  per  pound  ($265  per kilogram).  In Afghanistan, the average price in November 2008 was $55 per kilogram, down sharply from early 2007 when it was above $100

per kilogram.

Dramatic differences in the price of opium between regions and sometimes even within regions or countries is not unusual, the report said.

The  region  of  Southeast  Asia where  the  borders  of  Myanmar, Thailand  and  Laos meet,  known  as the Golden Triangle, produced more than  half  of  the  world's  opium  in 1990 and one-third in 1998