World's fastest-growing agricultural land use: opium

On the heels of the study showing marijuana as the most valuable agricultural crop in the United States comes the finding that the opium poppy, not soybeans, is the world's most rapidly increasing agricultural land use.

The increased acreage planted to the opium poppy in Afghanistan since the U.S. occupation outraces all other acreage shifts in the world's agricultural economy, according to the Real Estate Economy blog. Source. The author writes:

The most telling part of the story is that heroin production was practically eliminated by the Taliban, and this born again boom of the illicit crop has taken place under America's post-9/11 watch. ...

Hardly a surprise that we've failed to locate bin Laden. Hell, we apparently can't even find almost half a million acres of opium.