Helmand

Helmand
Hilmand
ActiveRecorded as grown here since 2000
⛶
Geography
Country	Afghanistan
Province/State	Helmand Province
Coordinates	31.105, 64.032
Landscape
Area	58,010 km²
Terrain	Approximately Helmand Province
Growing history
Dated accessions	2022
Documentation
Appellations	0
Accessions	3
Conservation
Populations	none documented yet

Helmand is a landrace cannabis growing area in southern Afghanistan, drawn on Helmand Province, the province round Lashkar Gah. The cannabis surveys carried out by the Afghan Ministry of Counter Narcotics with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which spell the name Hilmand, found cannabis grown in the province in each of their four years, 2009 to 2012.^{: 11: 13: 13: 12} The first survey reported "sizable amounts of cannabis cultivation" in all four southern provinces it covered, Helmand among them. None of the surveys gives an area for any one province, because their sampling could not estimate a single province with enough accuracy.^{: 11, 20: 9}

Cultivation in the surveys

The 2009 survey covered the twenty provinces where cannabis had been seen or reported before and counted only cannabis grown on fields; kitchen gardens, plants along compound walls and wild cannabis were left out.^: 11 It found a clear geographic link between cannabis and opium poppy at the provincial level, and Helmand grew more poppy than any other province that year, 69,833 hectares.^: 20–21 Surveyors could not check the satellite images on the ground in Hilmand, Uruzgan and Zabul. On 14 December 2009 an aircraft fitted with a high-resolution camera flew over selected areas of those provinces and of Kandahar instead, and the report prints an oblique aerial photograph and a satellite image of a cannabis field in Hilmand Province.^{: 49, 51}

The province was again growing cannabis in 2010, and thirteen satellite images were taken over it that year.^{: 13, 51} The 2011 and 2012 reports were retitled surveys of commercial cannabis and counted only fields where cannabis was grown as a single crop. Helmand was among the provinces whose estimate came from a random sample of satellite images in both years.^{: 11, 13, 44: 12, 27} The 2012 report illustrates how it timed the satellite images with readings of plant growth, taken from earlier images, at a cannabis-growing site in Hilmand; in two examples from 2010 and 2011 the images had been taken after the crop had passed its peak, and the dates were corrected for 2012. Helicopter flights over Helmand and six other provinces gave aerial photographs that stood in for ground checks.^: 27–28

Growing

The surveys assign Helmand to their Southern region. Its farmers sowed between mid-April and June in 2009; the 2010 survey gave April to June for sowing and November to December for the harvest, and the 2011 survey March to June and September to December.^{: 20: 25: 37} The 2009 survey found cannabis a steadier crop in the south than elsewhere: 44 per cent of the Southern region's cannabis farmers had grown it in every year since 2004, against 7 per cent in the other regions, and the survey called it "a more permanent feature of the agricultural portfolio of households" there.^: 17 In 2011, 69 per cent of the region's cannabis farmers also grew opium poppy, and cannabis took 22 per cent of the area they gave to cash crops, against 19 per cent for poppy.^{: 29, 32}

Farmers in the Southern region named three varieties in 2009: Mazari, Kandahari and Spera botay, which the survey glosses as Brown Bush.^: 15 Mazari (Balkhi) was the variety most often reported in the region in 2010 and 2011, at 54 and 52 per cent of farmers' reports.^: 19: 37 In the Southern, Eastern and Central regions farmers combined the first and second yields of sieving the threshed plants as their first grade of resin powder, or garda, and a few southern farmers reported a fourth grade.^: 22 Most of the region's farmers paid the informal usher tax on their cannabis in 2008.^: 42

Seizures

The Counter Narcotics Police recorded seizures of 1,112 kg of hashish in Helmand in 2007, 1,466 kg in 2008 and 558 kg in 2009.^: 41

Appellations

No appellation pages exist for this growing area yet.

Accessions

Accession ID	Name	Locality	Elevation	Collected
ATA-AFG-HEL-0120240001	2024 ATA Lashkar Gah Reproduction
DCC-AFG-HEL-0120160001	2016 DCC Afghan Helmand Reproduction
RSC-AFG-HEL-0120220001	Helmand General Population 2022			2022

The accessions are seed lots sold or bred on by The Real Seed Company, ATAO Genetics and the Derg Corra Collective. Their listings name the province or, for ATAO's line, Lashkar Gah; none names a district or village. According to the collective's description on SeedFinder, its line comes from seed that a Danish soldier stationed in the province took home in buds gathered in cannabis fields.

Recent news

No news items are recorded for this growing area yet.

See also

• Afghanistan
• Kandahar
• Balkh
• Charas