All-time high for opium farmers

Popular posies: Displaced residents working in poppy fields for their livelihood in Pekon township. — AFP

In a remote corner of Myanmar, a line of farmers move through a field of nodding poppies, making small cuts in the greenish-purple pods to release opium resin.

The next morning they will collect the residue that has seeped out overnight and parcel it up into bundles of sticky opium – the building blocks for manufacturing heroin.