This road leads to the heart of Burma's opium industry.
Early after Valley is covered with opium poppy.
Nearly 25% of the world's heroin starts here, scraped from the plant's sticky sap.
In 2006, poppy production had all but been eliminated here in the heart of the Golden
Triangle.
Heralded by the United Nations as a major victory in the global war on drugs, it was
a hopeful, yet hapless, prediction.
Ten years on, a toxic combination of civil war and poverty have driven farmers back to
a crop with a seemingly unending market, feeding a global hunger for heroin.
Since 2006, opium cultivation in Myanmar has tripled again, showing that the optimism
of 2006 at the end of the Golden Triangle was inside, I think, really was completely unrealistic.
Burma is back again as one of the major opium cultivation countries in the world.
Farming poppies and harvesting opium are both illegal in Myanmar, but here in a rebel-controlled
area of southern Shan state bordering China and Thailand, the industry runs with impunity.
The ethnic Shan have long harvested poppy for medicinal value on a small scale, but now
it's being used to escape poverty and fund their fight for freedom from the central government.
Food security is a concern here amongst the villagers.
Resources are scammed.
Villagers have no electricity or running water.
Although poppy has not made them rich, it has kept food on their tables.
This is just one valley of poppy, surrounded by a sea of others.
The UN estimates that the 100 hectares of poppy in this one field will eventually translate
into $160 million on the streets in the form of heroin.
Each family here will earn about $2,000 from harvest, about three times more than if they
had grown vegetables, but there is five times more labor.
Farmers face extortion from middlemen and have to pay unofficial taxes to local police,
rebel groups, and the Burmese government.
The government, despite the corruption, has an official policy of identification and
eradication.
But researchers say the strategy, when enforced, often backfires.
First of all, of course, when you go into a village where people rely on opium cultivation
as their sole cash crop and you destroy that, it creates conflict with the villages.
It also really creates very big livelihood problems today, because you drive them further
into poverty.
This is the cash crop that they rely on.
They have to buy rice from it.
If they eradicate it, all of a sudden they don't have it anymore.
These are very serious problems for that.
A year ago, the road to this area didn't even exist, making access nearly impossible.
But in attempt to help curb the booming poppy industry, the United Nations carved this rugged
path into the mountain landscape.
They are working to create alternative livelihoods for farmers, caught in the poverty and poppy
cycle.
We are very happy again to be here with you, within our, almost we can say within our family
here.
We feel at home.
Jochen Weiss arrived recently from Peru, where he spent 30 years transforming a landscape
dominated by coca, to coffee.
He has similar plans here.
Okay, for everybody who will be selected for a new coffee field, but must first gain the
farmers trust.
Mr. Miguel, we'll go with the technicians in the next two weeks to assure the best quality
of seeds possible for coffee.
While poppy can be planted and harvested only four months later, farmers must wait three
years with no income for their first coffee yield.
So coffee you have to see here is just first permanent crop.
It's one of the essential crops.
What we do with the farmers is treat them now, not anymore as very poor people.
We treat them now as partners.
We go to them and tell them, we want to work with you.
We want you to leave with the poppy cultivation.
We don't condition you to give you this.
While the United Nations has convinced a small number in the community to begin growing
coffee, there is still a question as to whether it will curb poppy or just move the problem
to a different area.
And even if Mr. Vice is successful in his plans to convert this area into a budding
coffee cooperative, experts warn that without curbing demand for heroin and creating peace
in Myanmar's jungles, the war on drugs will continue.
For many of them, there is an opium solution more than a problem.
It will be very difficult to solve the drug problem if we don't have peace in the country.
It doesn't mean we should not do anything now at the moment.
We can start development projects, which will really start to address the most urgent problems
that we have.
But clear at the same time, without peace, it's very hard to solve the drug problem.
