In an article about the drug eradication program in The New Yorker, writer Jon Lee Anderson reported on the price difference for farmers harvesting opium. According to interviews with local Afghan farmers, a farmer is able to receive “about thirty-three dollars from an acre of wheat, and between five hundred and seven hundred dollars from an acre of poppies.”
Source: Jon Lee Anderson, “The Taliban’s Opium War,” New Yorker, July 9, 2007.