Balkh

Balkh
ActiveRecorded as grown here since 2000
⛶
Geography
Country	Afghanistan
Province/State	Balkh Province
Coordinates	36.667, 67.079
Landscape
Area	16,740 km²
Terrain	Approximately Balkh Province
Growing history
Dated accessions	2006–2019
Documentation
Appellations	0
Accessions	6
Conservation
Populations	none documented yet

Balkh is a landrace cannabis growing area in northern Afghanistan, drawn on Balkh Province, the province round Mazar-i-Sharif. The cannabis surveys carried out by the Afghan Ministry of Counter Narcotics with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found cannabis grown in the province in each of their four years, 2009 to 2012.^{: 11: 13: 13: 12} None of the surveys gives the area under cannabis in Balkh, because their sampling could not estimate any single province with enough accuracy.^: 11: 9 The commentary to the first survey, signed by the UNODC's executive director, called Balkh "once notorious for its Mazari (Balki) cannabis".^: 5

Cultivation in the surveys

The 2009 survey was the first systematic attempt to measure cannabis cultivation in Afghanistan. It covered the twenty provinces where the crop had been seen or reported before, and counted only cannabis grown on fields: plants in kitchen gardens, along compound walls or growing wild were left out.^{: 9, 11} Balkh was one of the seventeen provinces where it found cultivation, and it grew no opium poppy that year.^{: 11, 21} The province was again among those growing cannabis and free of poppy in 2010.^: 13–14

The 2011 and 2012 reports were retitled surveys of commercial cannabis; their area estimates count only fields where cannabis was grown as a single crop. Balkh was one of the fourteen provinces whose estimate that year came from satellite images rather than village interviews alone, and it again grew cannabis and no poppy.^{: 11, 13, 15, 44} The 2012 survey dropped the village interviews and surveyed sixteen provinces from satellite imagery only; Balkh was one of them, and the result for it was the same.^{: 9, 12–13, 27}

Growing

Cannabis in Afghanistan is a summer crop, sown after a winter crop such as wheat or poppy.^: 15 In the Northern region, to which the surveys assign Balkh, farmers sowed between mid-April and June in 2009; the 2010 survey gave March to April for sowing there and November to December for the harvest, and the 2011 survey April to May and November to December.^{: 11, 20: 25: 37}

Most Afghan cannabis farmers in 2009 grew the crop on its own, but mixed plantings were most common in Balkh and three other provinces. In Balkh, the survey reported, cannabis was often grown together with cotton.^: 16–17

Farmers gave the surveys their own names for what they grew. In 2009 the Northern region grew mostly the variety called Mazari, which was also the most often named variety in the country.^: 15 The 2010 survey found Logari Shadani the most cultivated variety in the Northern region, at 40 per cent of farmers' reports, while Mazari (Balkhi) led in the country as a whole.^: 19 In 2011 the region's farmers named Mazari (Balkhi) in 83 per cent of reports.^: 37

Garda and hashish

Afghan farmers thresh the dried plants and sieve them repeatedly into a resin powder they call garda, sold as first, second and third grades; most sell the powder, and traders turn it into hashish, locally charas.^{: 20, 22–23} The 2009 survey found that the Northern region's powder, which it called Balkhi garda, held more resin and no cannabis leaves, whereas farmers in the Central and Eastern regions mixed leaves into the first grade.^: 22 The best first garda of the north, sieved in the traditional way, was called Jooshi or Balkhi garda; farmers reported that 25 kg of ordinary first garda gave only about 14 kg of it.^: 23 Hashish made from it by warming the powder over a flame and working it by hand was called Jooshi hashish, "also known as Balkhi hashish or Sherak-i-Mazar (milk of Mazar)".^: 25

The difference had narrowed by 2011. Price reports towards the end of that year said that first garda from Balkh was of lower quality than usual, and it sold for less.^: 17 Drawing on fieldwork by Mansfield and Paul Fishstein, Bradford and Mansfield report that in 2015 chars in Balkh was still sorted into grades, the first selling for US$44 a kilogram, the second for US$22 and the last, two-thirds of the yield, for US$11. The yield was 24.75 kg a jerib, about 124 kg a hectare, but the low prices left a net return of US$424 a jerib.^{: para. 23}

Trade

The 2009 survey recorded, from anecdotal reports, cannabis trading centres in Balkh Province, among them Chimtal, Balkh and Chaharbolak. Traders had begun to turn garda into hashish with machines brought from Pakistan, a technique found most recently in the main trading centres of Kandahar, Balkh and Uruzgan, at clandestine locations such as the areas of Chimtal.^{: 25, 35} Its executive director's commentary placed hubs of the cannabis trade, which followed the opium trafficking routes, in Balkh, Uruzgan and Kandahar.^: 5 In 2008 the Counter Narcotics Police recorded seizures of 3,803 kg of hashish in Balkh, the third-largest provincial total that year.^: 40

Bans and prices

According to Bradford and Mansfield, cannabis cultivation resumed in Balkh after the fall of the Taliban government in late 2001. Governor Atta Muhammad Nur then banned it in 2008, after and alongside the opium ban he enforced between 2007 and 2012.^{: para. 14, 20} The 2009 survey's commentary took the steep rise in cannabis prices in Balkh, which it put down to a "governor-led crackdown on drug cultivation since 2007", to illustrate the shift of cultivation from the north to the south.^: 5 Farm-gate prices of garda in Balkh rose sharply in the second half of 2009, and in 2010 Balkh was among the three provinces where they rose most.^: 37: 39

Appellations

No appellation pages exist for this growing area yet.

Accessions

Accession ID	Name	Locality	Elevation	Collected
ATA-AFG-BAL-0120060001	2006 ATA Mazar-i-Sharif IBL			2006
KHA-AFG-BAL-0120180001	Balkh Hash Plant 2018			2018
KHA-AFG-BAL-0120180002	Afghan Lemon 2018			2018
RSC-AFG-BAL-0120060001	Mazar-i-Sharif General Population 2006			2006
RSC-AFG-BAL-0120180001	Balkhi General Population 2018			2018
RSC-AFG-BAL-0120190001	Balkhi General Population 2019			2019

The accessions are seed lots sold or bred on by The Real Seed Company, ATAO Genetics and Khalifa Genetics. Their listings name the province, Mazar-i-Sharif or the city of Balkh; none names a district or village.

Recent news

No news items are recorded for this growing area yet.

See also

• Afghanistan
• Charas
• Hashish