Afghanistan was the world’s biggest opium producer and a major source of heroin in Europe and Asia when the Taliban seized power in August 2021. They pledged to wipe out the country’s drug cultivation industry and imposed a formal ban in April 2022, dealing a heavy blow to hundreds of thousands of farmers and day laborers who relied on proceeds from the crop to survive.

The U.N. agency said cultivation was up 330% and production rose by 400% compared to last year. Cultivation rose to more than 43,000 hectares (106,000 acres) in 2026 from 10,000 hectares (24,700 acres) a year earlier, it said.

Farmers were concealing small poppy plots within cereal fields or inside walled compounds to evade detection, the report said.