A household model of opium-poppy cultivation in Afghanistan

This article presents and implements a theoretical foundation for exploring Afghan farmers’ decisions to cultivate opium poppy that can be used to develop supply-control policy and guide future empirical research. To our knowledge, we are the first to employ a household production model that allows Afghan farmers to choose between opium-poppy and licit-crop cultivation to maximize their expected utility, while weighing the costs, benefits, and risks of agricultural production and consumption jointly. We derive policy lessons from the theoretical analysis and empirical evidence that reflect the complexity of Afghan farmers’ decision-making and the socio-economic and environmental factors that influence it.