Quiz: How much did opium poppy cultivation change in Afghanistan from 2008 to 2009?

For those of you who don’t subscribe to the bimonthly print edition of Foreign Policy, you’re missing a great feature: the FP Quiz. It has eight intriguing questions about how the world works.

(Meanwhile, prepare for the Olympics’ opening ceremony by taking Slate‘s national-anthem quiz.)

The question I’d like to highlight this week is:

By how much did opium poppy cultivation change in Afghanistan from 2008 to 2009?

a) up 22 percent      b) remained stable       c) down 22 percent 

Answer after the jump …

Answer:

C, down 22 percent.

Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan fell just over a fifth from 157,000 hectares in 2008 to 123,000 in 2009, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. The most noteworthy drop was in the country’s unstable Helmand province, where cultivation dropped 33 percent from 2008 to 2009. The turnaround is attributed in part to stronger leadership from the governor, more effective counternarcotics operations, and an improvement in the incentives for growing legal crops.

And for more questions about how the world works, check out the rest of the FP Quiz.