The stalls may have been displaying innocuous produce and specialist farming equipment, but many of the turbaned Afghan men at the opening of the second ever agricultural fair in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, were almost certainly more into opium than alfalfa and wheat.

They are some of the people who in the past seven years have helped make the province into the world's biggest producer of opium, dedicating some of Afghanistan's most productive agricultural land to the poppy.